


A Study In Growth

by Himrqwerty



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Buck Centric, Buck Whump, Dissociation, Firefam Feels, Hurt Evan "Buck" Buckley, Or anyone but Buck, Or the 118, Panic Attacks, Sad Evan "Buck" Buckley, Sick Character, Sickfic, Suicidal Thoughts, Team as Family, This is not kind to Eddie, Worried Firefam, buck realizes that the 118 treats him badly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 22,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25073170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Himrqwerty/pseuds/Himrqwerty
Summary: Buck has believed for so long that he's nothing. Then, he becomes a firefighter and finds a family at the 118. When his life is spiraling, he finds that perhaps the 118 isn't as much family as he thought it was. And maybe he can find happiness outside of it.
Comments: 124
Kudos: 441





	1. Denial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buck gets sick and doesn't tell the 118 any details. He hangs out with a new friend that treats him right.

# Chapter 1

Something is off with Buck.

At this point, something is always off with Buck, so Bobby’s “Buck Alarm”, as Athena calls it, is sort of haywire. Bobby decides that’s why it’s taken him so long to notice. Buck had been so desperate to get back, and Bobby had worried so much — still worries so much — about him getting sick, about him valuing the job over his own life, about how an injury would affect him both professionally and personally and — he just worries about Buck.

But Buck is back, and they’ve all forgiven him, and they have all moved on, pretty much.

But it is starting to seem like, maybe… Maybe Buck hasn’t. When he’d first gotten back, he’d been so eager to sit at family dinners, to talk with everyone, to tell them about his physical therapy, to talk and talk and talk. And the rest of the crew just hadn’t been in a place to really receive that. So, when he’d finally quieted down, Bobby assumed he was just reading the room. Realizing that they needed a minute to process the betrayal and forgive.

It’s been about six months since Eddie and Buck bro-hugged it out. At first, things had seemed good. Seemed as normal as they could. Buck had gone back to being a chatterbox and everyone was responding again — although, perhaps with not as much vigor as before. And maybe, okay, things aren’t exactly back to normal. Everyone is talking, sure, but they only started to invite Buck back out to karaoke and dinner at Athena and Bobby’s.

And for all that Buck fought to get back to the station, it seems like he would rather be anywhere than around the crew outside of work.

Bobby just brushed that off — he can’t drink because of the blood thinners and there are no shortages of bad experiences at the Grant-Nash house, so he can’t blame him for being hesitant there.

Where Bobby really noticed the change in Buck was sick leave. It isn’t that Buck didn’t take any before — although it was a rarity — it’s how he took it. Before everything, Buck would fill out the form, email to HR, and let Bobby know what was up. Usually, Bobby would bring him some soup or the nice tissues or some other thing to make him feel better because he always knew what was up with Buck.

Now, though.

He’d gotten Buck’s first Request for Leave form after the lawsuit four months after the bro-hug. And Bobby hadn’t known what was wrong. He frowned, shook his head, and assumed that Buck had forgotten to tell him. He texted Buck a quick “need anything?”, and Buck, who previously had never turned down a Bobby care package, replied with a terse “no.”.

At the time, he’d had other things to worry about. Bigger things. More important things.

But now, he’s gotten Buck’s second Request for Leave form and, well.

He still doesn’t know what is going on with Buck.

He stares down at his phone, chewing on his lip, rereading Buck’s text yet again.

In response to his “how are you feeling?”, Buck simply said “fine.”

So, apparently, Buck is _fine_.

Before all of this, Buck would have texted him “NO :::(((((((((“ and then called him, voice scratchy, to complain about his illness. He’d have insisted that Bobby make him chicken soup and bring him the “magic tissues” — that Buck knew full well were just tissues with aloe vera in them.

Now, Buck is “fine.” with a period.

Well, then. He’ll just have to go to the next best thing.

“Hey, Eddie, can I talk to you for a second?” He calls, sticking his torso halfway out of the office door. Eddie turns away from Hen, gives him a thumbs-up, nods at Hen, and jogs over.

“Something up, Cap?” Eddie asks.

“Nothing about you, Eddie. Just wondering how Buck is doing.”

“Why, is he late? He started ten minutes ago, right? Is he not here?”

Fuck.

“No, he, ah. He is sick, apparently. I just got his Request for Leave form faxed from HR.” Bobby rubs at the bridge of his nose. Buck is never going to stop giving him headaches.

“Oh.” Eddie looks only slightly like he ate a lemon, so he obviously isn’t overly concerned. That relaxes Bobby just a touch, but the notion that not only does he not know if Buck is okay, his best friend — the person that Buck spends most of his time with doesn’t either. “To be honest, though, I haven’t seen him in a while. I’ve seen him when I drop Christopher off, of course, but I’m usually… not more than a foot in the door.”

Double fuck.

“Do you want me to go check on him?” Eddie asks, his mouth twisting a touch more.

Bobby chews his lip more, trying to grasp a piece of skin that is peeling off his lip with his teeth.

“No, I think we really can’t afford to lose another set of hands. Besides, it’s Buck. If he needed something, he’d tell us.”

Wouldn’t he?

At that thought, Bobby rips the lip skin off, flooding his mouth with blood.

~

Buck feels like absolute shit. Whether it was whatever they’d had for dinner yesterday, or the milk that he thought was maybe just a touch too old, or just his shitty luck, he couldn’t keep anything down. When he’d jerked up from bed at three in the morning, bolting to the bathroom before vomiting for ten minutes, he’d thrown in the towel right away. There was no way he would be able to function at work even if this was the only bout of vomiting.

Sighing, he pulled up his least favorite form: Request for Leave. He’s gotten much better about using it when he needs to. This will be the second time in six months that he voluntarily calls out from work.

With his form sent off to Tylor in HR, his alarm turned off, and a trash can and bottle of water on his nightstand, Buck drops back in bed and waits for sleep to come.

Three hours and two vomiting sessions later, Buck’s internal alarm wakes him up for his eight am shift, though whatever rest he got from groaning quietly and clutching his roiling stomach was minimal.

After a couple of flavorless crackers, Buck checks his phone. Scrolling through his notifications, he swipes away the news, feeling too gross to deal with whatever horrible things have happened now. His thumb pauses over a text from Bobby.

“How are you feeling?”

Buck doesn’t quite know how to answer that. Before the truck, he would have griped and moaned and asked Bobby to make him some soup.

Now, though. How can he trust Bobby with something like this? Bobby had seen him at his worst, seen him climb up from a nightmare and become a stronger, better person, and had held it against him for almost an entire year. Buck couldn’t rely on Bobby to trust him when he was feeling his absolute best. How could he ever rely on him to trust him when he felt like this?

“fine.”

The period might prompt Bobby to check with Eddie, though that won’t help him any. He hasn’t hung out with Chris in a little bit, and he only started feeling shitty last night, so there is no way that Eddie would know that anything was even beginning to be wrong. That made his heart hurt, just a touch. There had been a time where Buck knew everything that was going on with Eddie, knew when he had a sniffle or when he was having a hard time dealing with anything, and Eddie had known the same about Buck.

All they ever texted about now was Chris, and only ever a brief message about when Chris would be dropped off. And they never said anything more than a couple of short, compulsory greetings when Eddie dropped off his kid.

Buck hasn’t gotten so much as a casual “hi” from Eddie since before the tsunami, and he is pretty confident that this isn’t going to change anything.

Instead of allowing himself to mope, he calls Indya. She picks up on the third ring tossing out a breathy “hi”. Buck can tell she is in the middle of something — maybe the grocery store?

His raspy, pathetic response stops the breathy noises on the other side of the line immediately.

“Sore throat? It’s onset pretty fast, so probably not a run of the mill cold. Oh god damn it Evan, did you drink that fucking milk? I fucking told you it was old.” Indya sighs.

Buck chuckles a little, grimacing when some stomach acid rises into his mouth. He swallows away the sour taste and replies, “yeah, I know. You were right, okay? I took the day off. Can you…” He wants to ask, knows that she would say yes. Instead of asking, he says “Bobby texted.”

“Oh, Buck. I’ll head over, okay? We can make some soup. My mom just sent me her matzo ball recipe; I would like to try it out. It always made me feel better when I was sick.”

“Thanks, Indya.”

“What did you say?”

“Just that I was fine. I have a feeling he’ll talk to Eddie to check on me, but.”

There is a heavy silence over the phone.

“Yeah.”

Buck’s new friendship with Indya has been like this. At a low point, after he’d returned to work, he’d called the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health and she’d picked up. She was a first responder too, a social worker that helped people before they made an irreversible decision.

He’d spilled his guts to her on the line, crying over how his family hated him and how he was never going to get back what he had, all because he’d made a stupid decision.

“I wasn’t even going to call, you know? I was just going to do it. But then I thought about, you know, what if someone called 911 and the 118 answered? What if I fuck this up, too? I want to do something right for once.”

At the time, Indya had let that sit, let them ruminate in the silence for almost a full minute.

“I’m going to ask you a question, okay, Evan?”

He had murmured his assent.

“If this had happened to Eddie, what would you have done?”

He hadn’t known how to respond to that.

“If Eddie had gotten crushed by a fire truck, worked his ass off to get healthy, had a pulmonary embolism due to the pins in his leg, then had Bobby tell him that he wasn’t trustworthy, and so Eddie had sued, what would you have done?”

There had been another long pause.

“Would you have dropped him?”

“No, god, of course not. I would never drop Eddie, or anyone, they’re my family, I need them. I…”

He had suddenly understood what Indya was trying to get at.

“Oh, god.” The realization had hit him, forced him to drop his phone, curl in on himself as tight as he could. His knees bent up around his ears, his arms wrapped around his stomach. Tears dripped onto his tattoo, blurring the word angel. “Oh, god.”

He had heard Indya calling for him worriedly from where the phone had fallen onto the bed beside him.

He uncurled enough to reach out and grab the phone, hand quivering.

He had pressed it to his ear and drenched the screen in his tears.

“They… they don’t love me like I love them, do they?”

“Oh, Evan. I haven’t known you for very long, but I can tell that you love with your whole heart. I don’t know anyone that works with you, but I can tell you this: you deserve a family that loves you just as much as you love them. One that forgives as easily as you. You are a kind-hearted man, and you should stick around so that the people who deserve it get to see you.”

He had let Indya regulate the pace of his breathing for a little, let her soothing tone and kind words wash over him. He hadn’t believed them, quite yet, but he thought he may be able to, eventually.

He’d wanted to ask her to keep in touch, but with how that ended last time, maybe first responders just shouldn’t be friends.

After a while, he’d cleared his throat.

“Thank you, Indya. I’m not sure I believe what you’re saying just yet, but I think I want to try and get there.”

For a woman he’d yet to meet, he could hear her smile through the phone.

“I’m glad, Evan. If you ever need anything, you know where to call.” He had smiled in response.

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Wait, Evan, before you go. I know how hard it was for you to reach out, and I’m going to be honest — I’m worried you won’t again. How would you feel about exchanging contact information? It can just be email or Instagram handle or something, but I would love to have a way to stay in touch.” The smile on Buck’s face had grown.

He hadn’t smiled this genuinely since before the truck. “Yeah, Indya. I think I would like that.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Indya takes care of Buck. Hen faces their mistakes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to thank ilostmyothersock for letting me bounce ideas off of them! I found this prompt through them and also am obsessed with their writing, so do yourself a favor and check it out.

A knock sounds at his door, likely Indya. Buck rolls himself off the couch with a groan and drags himself to the door. While he hasn’t vomited in a while, he’s almost certainly dehydrated and needs to eat. When he opens the door mid-knock, Indya almost falls in, a red spot forming on her forehead. 

Buck raises an eyebrow at her.

“What? My hands are full, I can’t exactly knock or open the door myself. Feeding a giant like you requires a lot of groceries, you know.”

Buck smiles softly at her. “Thanks, Indya. I’m feeling better, now.”

It’s Indya’s turn to cock an eyebrow at Buck. “Uh-huh… So, your throat isn’t sore?” 

Buck swallows harshly and doesn’t answer.

“And you aren’t moping about we-all-know-who?”

Buck narrows his eyes at her.

“I’m sick, you can’t make fun of me, it isn’t fair. I’m too frail to defend myself!” Buck exclaims.

“Oh, really? A second ago you were doing better,” Indya replies.

Buck just sticks his tongue out at her and turns his attention to the reusable bags entangling her arms. Indya wasn’t kidding around. She had a ton of food.

She gently dropped the bags on the floor of Buck’s kitchen, watching as a bag of carrots fell out of an improperly packed bag. Indya ruffles through the bags, pulling out the ingredients she needs for matzo ball soup and leaving the other items in the bags, putting them in the fridge, freezer, or leaving them on the counter by the sink.

“Do you want to learn how to make the soup, or do you want to go back to sleep?”

Indya doesn’t give Buck more than a couple of seconds before she decides for him, pushing him towards the sofa. He goes where he’s guided. Once Indya has him laid out on the couch, she tucks a blanket around him and turns the television onto something mindless. “I’m going to go get everything started, I’ll be back once the stock is simmering, okay?”

Buck nods, his eyes already drifting shut. He is a touch too long for the sofa even though he’d bought one of the larger ones in the store. To lay comfortably, he has one socked foot on the ground, and the other leg is bent slightly. He’s laying on his left hand, but his right is adorably curled around his left shoulder, his head tilted to rest against the back of his hand.

Indya takes a moment to admire him. If she wasn’t gay and currently dating a woman with even darker skin than her, she would be drooling. He really is a specimen.

As she carves her chicken, sorting the various pieces into reusable freezer bags and tossing the skin and bones into Evan’s stockpot, she reflects on the short time that they’ve known each other.

She was right, in that phone call. He loves with everything he has, and she has gotten lucky enough to be on the receiving end of that love. She’s doing everything she can to give back as much as she can.

Their friendship hadn’t taken long to develop after that night. One night, she’d been drinking — sad drinking, where she was having a fine day until she had one cocktail, and then she became incredibly mopey about being single, about her seeming lack of hobbies, about the state of the world, about everything. 

She had been scrolling through Instagram to get her mind off of the mess of her drunkenness, another cocktail in hand when she’d sent an adorable picture of some cats to Evan. It was the system that they’d developed. Indya would send Buck a cute picture, and Buck would reply to let her know that he was doing okay. Or, rather, that he was alive. It was a quick reminder that she was thinking of him, that she hadn’t forgotten about him, that she still cared, but it wasn’t overbearing.

So that night, she’d sent him a cute cat, he’d replied with a simple “aww”, and as she’d finished her Moscow Mule, she’d started to cry.

And well. She doesn’t completely remember what she’d been crying about, and the messages she’d sent were almost entirely gibberish, except the ones where Buck asks what is going on, obviously very confused. He’d sent her his phone number, she’d called him and cried for, as she had noted the next day after looking at her call history, almost an hour and a half. When she’d asked what had happened, cheeks flushing dark red, he had refused to tell her. Something about maintaining her confidence. Her drunk confidence, she had pointed out. Can it count as breaking a vow of silence if you’re only telling the person who you promised to? Indya argues no, but Buck is loyal to a fault, so she is still in the dark about that night.

But whatever had gone down, they had become close friends. He knew her darkest secrets — she had to assume, what else would he be so tight-lipped about? And she knew his biggest insecurities. So, the next night they’d both had off, they went out to a club. 

Buck makes an excellent wingman.

She would say he has impeccable taste, but given his past with the 118, she was hesitant. Either way, though, she had left the club that night with a very cute girl’s phone number and a whispered promise that she wasn’t only looking for sex.

The girl was still around, so in this one case, Buck hadn’t chosen too poorly.

At this point in memory lane, the stock is simmering and the matzo ball dough needs to sit for at least three hours, so Indya makes her way over to Buck.

She gently lifts his head, gets rid of the pillow underneath it, and sits down.

Compared to Buck, she’s a twig.

Once his head is situated comfortably in her lap, she runs her fingers through his hair. At her insistence, he’d grown it out, let his curls develop. She loves to touch them. His curls are so different from hers. Hers are tight and coiled, but his are big, looping curls that sit gently on his head. Whatever product he uses makes them work for him — he doesn’t look childish like he worried about. He looks… good. Confident.

She smiles down at his gentle snuffles, changes the channel to something she is interested in, and settles even further into his couch. 

~

Bobby, Eddie, Hen, and Chim are only five hours into a twenty-four-hour shift, and the tensions are already high. Bobby is worried about Buck and isn’t his usual self around the firehouse. Outside, on a call, he’s just as focused as ever, but once he no longer has the pressure to save people, he falls back into his mind.

Eddie is his usual pissy self. Even after stopping the street fighting and taking up therapy, he’s angry all the time. It comes out in snappy bursts, in taking Buck-level risks on calls, in drinking too much coffee, in eating irregularly.

Hen is mostly concerned about Bobby. She can tell he isn’t quite ready to talk about it and she highly suspects that it’s Buck. But, if he were sick or injured, Bobby would be making chicken soup or preparing a care package, so Hen assumes it isn’t Buck. Maybe it’s May or Harry? Whatever is going on, she keeps a closer eye on Bobby today.

Chim seems oblivious. He’s his usual cheery self, snapping gum and joking with a reluctant Hen.

They’ve had a series of not very serious calls, one right after the other, until around 12:30 pm. Bobby prepares them a hearty salad, and then they break. Usually, at this point, Chim and Hen would be playing video games, but Hen just doesn’t have it in herself. There’s something off about the firehouse, and it isn’t just Bobby’s off mood. 

To give herself space to contemplate, she retreats to the bunk room. She goes to the bed furthest one away from the door, draws her curtain, and tucks herself into the back corner, clutching at the pillow.

It’s tempting to say that the off feeling started with the explosion, but she knows that isn’t it. Post-explosion, everyone had been tensed and scared for Buck. But now, the tension was off-balance. It’s even more tempting to blame it all on the lawsuit. Her eyebrows draw together at even the thought of it. But Hen breathes deeply and does her best to remember objectively. Then, it had been like they were all equally tense, and Buck had been as tense as all of them combined, evening the scales.

The current state of malaise was amplified because the scales were so incredibly out of balance. Bobby was the most off, but whereas Buck had always been right along with them in the tension and anxiety when he’d gotten back, it’s like his emotions had been under the world's largest magnifying glass. The guy had been expressive before, but this had been different.

Looking back, Hen’s surprised the poor guy hadn’t shattered at the slightest touch. He hadn’t been sleeping well, lost a significant amount of muscle mass — which for Buck, means something was very wrong. He’d also scaled back his typical Buck enthusiasm. At the time, Hen had labeled him sitting on the couch at family dinner as him needing a different chair, for his leg, but looking back… Hen is pretty sure Buck was pulling away. 

No, that is wrong.

She thinks about the silence. She hadn’t asked why he was over there. She hadn’t commented on the broken expression on his face every time they’d pulled out of the station without him. She hadn’t checked in when — Christ — when he’d been shaking so badly that he’d dropped a glass, when did his best to laugh it off when the other members of the firehouse caustically joked about him being a screw-up. She hadn’t run after his tense back after he’d cleaned the glass.

No, he’d been pushed away.

By the very people he’d fought so hard to get back to. He’d been terrified that the only family he had would fall apart if he wasn’t working there, and the whole god damn firehouse had proved him right.

And while she hadn’t taken part in the joking — which she now recognizes as cruel, rather than in good fun — she. God, she was almost worse, because she and Buck had been so close, and she’d sat back while he suffered. She had watched him fall into the depths of a brain she knew could be cruel and she had done nothing.

Hen wrenched back the curtain, bolted to the trash can in the middle of the room, and dry heaved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I used a random name generator to name Indya. She was originally India, but I realized I was basing her off of Indya Moore's AMAZING character from the Netflix show Pose, so I changed it to Indya in their honor.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More of Indya and Buck. Hen brings Bobby into the mix.

Buck wakes up around noon after Indya moves his head back onto the pillow.

He’s still bleary, his mouth tasting like a disgusting combination of toothpaste and lingering bile. He slowly blinks, groaning as he remembers the events of the day. “Soup?” He calls out hopefully. Indya clatters in the kitchen in response, which he takes as a not-yet, so he shifts onto his side and tucks his knees up to his stomach.

The position doesn’t really work on the couch, most of his legs are off the couch, but it soothes the childlike instinct to be small and let someone else protect him. Like this, head hidden between his knees and all of his sensitive bits protected, he feels safe — like nothing can touch him. But after a minute or so, his arms get tired of holding his legs in position, so he uncurls them and lays out on the couch. “Indi,” he groans, dragging out her name for an unreasonable amount of time.

“Buck,” she responds in the same dramatic manner.

“My tummy hurts.” It does, now that he’s flatter. It isn’t nausea, which is a welcome break, but his torso has been through the wringer this morning. It’s incredibly empty, and his abdominal muscles ache from all the vomiting. His head is foggy with a lack of sleep, his mouth still gross.

Indya walks over from the kitchen, one hand on her hip, a large wooden spoon in the other. She cocks her head, observing him. After a long beat, she nods decisively. “Okay, Evan. The soup is almost ready, so here’s what we’re going to do: first, eat some soup. Second, do some yoga. Third, watch trashy movies. Does that sound okay?”

It sounds as close to heaven as he could get. He nods gratefully. While Indya returns to the kitchen to finish whatever she has going on, Buck slowly shuffles over to his closet and grabs some yoga supplies — his mat and a spare for Indya, a bolster, and some wood blocks. He pushes his coffee table back towards the couch and lays the mats out, placing his props off to the side.

By the time he is done lurching around the apartment, Indya has served up two steaming bowls of soup. Buck gently lowers himself onto a chair and sniffs deeply.

“Mm!” He looks up, a little surprised.

“What, did you expect me to fail? My bubbie would never let me live it down. I may never have made matzo balls before, but I damn well know what they should taste like!”

Buck agrees that she did pretty good, for her first try. Not that he’s an expert in matzo ball soup, but he has had some of the leftovers that Indya occasionally has in her apartment. It’s exactly what he needed. The broth warms him up and massages the cramps in his stomach, somehow. The soft carrots and the matzo ball are filling while not being too much for him to handle. 

As he slurps, he finds himself blinking for longer and longer, head tipping dangerously downward.

“Hey!”

Buck startles, shaking his head and blinking rapidly.

“Don’t fall asleep on me, Evan. Finish your soup, and we’ll do some yoga. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll feel right as rain.”

Buck smiles at her drowsily.

He’s never been so glad to have her in his life. At one point, he had thought that Eddie would be the only person he would ever need again. They read each other so smoothly, always anticipating each other’s needs and actions and assisting where they could.

Buck sees that for what it was, now. It had verged on co-dependency. Buck had started to see himself as Christopher’s other dad — had wanted it like he wanted to breathe, had acted like it more often than not — and Eddie had wanted that support without ever giving any back. Over time, Buck had come to realize that when Eddie had said “You can have my back any day,” he had only meant in the field.

Buck’s “and you can have mine,” meant more. Everything Buck did had always meant more. Buck had started to see Eddie as his life partner, not just his work partner. And because he and Eddie both were unable to communicate, no boundaries had ever been set. Evan can see that for what it was now — toxic.

While he and Indya had had a similar meeting — it had been a life-or-death moment, after all, Indya had been careful to set boundaries with Buck. 

After that drunken phone call, Indya had sat him down and explained some things. 

She cared for him, obviously. She wanted to be friends. But also, she was gay and would never be interested in him romantically or sexually.

That firm explanation had lifted a weight off of Buck’s shoulders he hadn’t known was there. It had been where the confusion in his relationship with Eddie lay. Were they close friends? Were they more? A great many people thought they were more, and the two of them had never discussed what that meant to them. To Buck, it had meant that they had the potential for more, that they were compatible, and in some way, meant to be. To Eddie… well, Buck still didn’t know, but with the way that Eddie was treating Buck, it was almost certain that Eddie didn’t want other people’s off-handed comments to mean what Buck thought they meant.

And, to be honest, it was where the confusion lay in his relationship with Bobby, as well. Buck desperately wanted him to be the caring and stern father-figure he’d never had, but as Bobby had made clear, the 118 was not a family. It had just taken Buck a while to process that.

So, knowing that he could rely on Indya to be his friend, to take care of him like a friend, was a relief.

After she had set that clear boundary, Buck had given her a long hug and thanked her for being so straightforward.

“Evan?” Indya placed her cold hand on Buck’s forearm, dragging him out of his contemplative reverie.

“Sorry, Indya. Guess I got a little lost in thought.” He smiles wanly at her, looking down to note his empty bowl. “Ready to do some yoga?”

Indya perks up, excited that Buck is receptive to her plan. “Yeah, absolutely! While you were sleeping, I looked into some poses that would help with stomach pain, if you want to focus on those.” She looks at him quickly, examining his face. “Or, you can just do your thing. I’m just trying to give you options.”

This is another thing Buck loves about her. The way that she knows how to be a firm hand, insists that he take care of himself while giving him choices and including him in the decision process. It was a skill Bobby had never learned. 

Buck takes a moment to think. “No, I’ll trust whatever your research says. I’m not sure I am in the mood to sweat. Besides, I think forcing my stomach to do any hard work would not end well right now.” He smiles at Indya. “Thank you.”

Indya tucks her chin into her chest, a light flush covering her cheeks. This is another thing his relationship with the 118 had lacked — reciprocity. If Buck needed help, the rest of them gave their all and the other way around, but with Indya, they both gave and took.

The same way that Indya knows that Buck needs a firm hand that lets him choose, Buck knows that Indya needs validation more than anything. She needs to be reminded that she is loved and that Buck sees her for all of her grace.

When Buck is down, he makes sure to tell Indya how much her help is appreciated. When Indya is down, she never fears to instruct Buck on how to best help her or to nudge him to drink a glass of water while he fetches her one. The focus is never entirely on one person. It’s refreshing, albeit strange.

After all of the dishes are in the dishwasher or sink, Buck and Indya head to where Buck laid out the yoga mats. 

Indya gives him the list of poses she made to look through while she begins her own yoga routine.

Buck reads the list over and nods, starting with Ujjayi Pranayama, sitting on a block, crossing his legs, and breathing deeply.

Both of them move through their poses at their own pace. The room is filled with the sound of heavy, measured breathing. The smell of chicken stock is tinged with a touch of Indya’s sweat from the contortions she puts herself in.

As Buck brings himself out of a spinal twist and into Supta Baddha Konasana, laying on his back, bottoms of the feet touching, he glances over at Indya. She’s in some sort of backbend, not a pose that Buck recognizes. Her right leg is bent at the knee, her right arm brought around so her palm rests on the top of her foot, pressing down. Buck has never focused on flexibility. The looseness he retains from his regular yoga classes is all he really requires to live a healthy and happy life. Admittedly, there was a time that increased flexibility would have been very appealing to him — and working towards that increased flexibility with a woman as beautiful as Indya would have been even more appealing. 

But now, with their boundaries clear, and the ache in Buck’s stomach almost nearly gone, all Buck can feel is a platonic love for the woman that has come to mean so much to him.

~

Hen has been quiet all day, Bobby notes. She’s been keeping half an eye on him, he knows, because she noticed his funky mood, but this seems like more than that. He wonders if the same thing that is bothering him is bothering her.

Even while Buck had been tearing his life apart with the lawsuit, Bobby had been dropping off home-cooked meals. Admittedly, he had only ever placed them in a tote outside of his locked apartment door, but he always made sure that Buck was eating. Once he had returned to the 118, Bobby no longer felt the need to do that — he would eat at the firehouse.

The point is that Buck never turned down a home-cooked meal from Bobby. His unusual response to Bobby checking in has been weighing on Bobby’s mind all day, his meals lackluster and his joking with the team even more feeble.

Why would Buck turn down soup?

Bobby is in the kitchen stirring soup — for Buck, not that he will get to eat it — and chewing his lip when Hen puts her hand on his shoulder. He has been so immersed in his thoughts that he startles at the touch, some of the broth splattering on his wrist.

He hisses and Hen frowns, grabbing his arm to look at it. She grunts a little, tugging on his arm to move it to the sink. She douses his wrist in cold water before quietly saying, “what’s up, Bobby? You’ve been off all day.”

Bobby snorts. “I’m guessing it’s the same reason that you’re so quiet. Something weighing on you?”

Hen gives him a dry look at his avoidance and nods in the direction of Bobby’s office. He nods and gestures her towards the office. She nods back and leads the way.

Bobby closes the door after himself and sits down at the desk. He hesitates, giving Hen the chance to speak first. When she doesn’t, he easily caves. “Buck is fine,” he informs Hen, who looks so dubious that Bobby is surprised she doesn’t start laughing.

“Fine? That’s how you want to describe Buck? Buck, who no longer talks to us at work, or sits with us at family dinner, or comes to social events? That Buck? He’s fine?” Hen’s voice rises, getting angrier and angrier as she describes things going on with Buck.

Bobby shakes his head. “No, Hen. This morning I came in to find out Buck had filed a Request for Leave form. He’s off the next two days. I texted him to check in because he didn’t text me, he said he was ‘fine’, with a period.” He hands Hen his phone with his text chain to Buck open. “He turned down a care package, Hen. He turned down my soup.”

Hen is only half listening, scrolling through Bobby’s phone slowly, pausing occasionally to read. “Bobby, it’s worse than that.” Bobby honestly isn’t sure how it can get worse. “He used to text you all the time. On his day off, when he was with Eddie and Christopher, when he saw one of us outside of work. He was always texting you to check-in or let you know he’s okay. But after the lawsuit, it never went back to normal. The last time Buck texted you of his own volition was before the embolism.”

It’s a trend that Bobby hadn’t noticed. He’d gotten so used to radio silence from Buck during the lawsuit, and then so twisted up in his own feelings, that he hadn’t noticed the full extent of Buck’s changes. Buck had fully pulled away from the 118 — his self-professed only family. Bobby’s heart sinks even further.

Hen and Bobby sit in heavy silence for several minutes. Bobby looks back, wondering what other warning signs he missed. Buck had his world pulled out from under him, worked his ass off to get back some semblance of normality and control, and then the world pissed all over him again when the very metal holding his bone together caused blood clots. He’d worked his ass off again, only to find that his family didn’t trust him to know himself and replaced him.

Jesus. Looking at the past year through a lens of concern for Buck, it’s no wonder that Buck sued. 

“Jesus, Hen. I… his life has exploded. It’s no wonder that he’s isolating himself.”

Hen nods, her brow furrowing even further. “And with the way we treated him after everything, it’s a wonder he hasn’t asked to transfer.”

The way they treated him? Bobby makes a noise of confusion, quietly asking Hen to elaborate.

“You saw how he looked in that room during the lawsuit, Bobby. He looked devastated. Like every word out of his lawyer’s mouth hurt him more than it hurt us. And then we all got in that elevator and just looked at him like he was a pariah. And the way that Eddie screamed at him in public? His best friend basically said that he was a worthless piece of shit. And then he finally came back and we treated him like he was a new racist, homophobic, racist probie that we’re all waiting to fuck up enough to give us a reason to fire.”

Bobby’s stomach turned. He had just been trying to keep Buck safe. He knows how dependent Buck is on validation. How much he craves paternal love and care. And he’d taken Buck’s unwavering trust, love, and devotion and shit on it.

“Holy fuck.”

Hen nods. “I think we owe Buck the most groveling. And apologies until we can’t breathe.”

“I’m making soup just out of habit. I’ll drop by his house after the shift and feed him. I can start with that then.”

“And I’ll get him some superman ice cream and see him tomorrow.”

“It’s a plan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used this list of poses to choose which poses Buck does https://blog.paleohacks.com/yoga-for-stomach-pain/#.
> 
> The pose that Indya is doing is the Half Frog Pose, https://www.yogajournal.com/poses/half-frog-pose.
> 
> I used the Sanskrit names for the yoga poses because I believe that Buck would go to a teacher that cares deeply about the spirituality of yoga. He doesn't just use it as a means of exercise, he learns about and is interested in its history and spirituality. Also, I love to headcanon that Buck is super aware of his privilege and uses his power to support people in need, so the owner of the studio he goes to is an Indian woman who went back to her grandparents country and fell in love with yoga.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobby cannot do literally anything right.

After Indya and Buck finish their yoga, Buck is exhausted but feeling much more human. His stomach is settled and his skin no longer has that slight itchiness that indicates an incoming downward spiral. Indya, too, looks more settled, even though she hadn’t looked particularly ruffled beforehand. He blinks sleepily at her.

“Couch or bed?” he asks. 

Indya studies the living room in all its disarray. “Bed,” she says decisively. “MJ is coming over soon and you alone barely fit on that couch, let alone you and two queens.”

Buck laughs, grimacing when it grates his still acid-sore throat. “Okay, but you know how much she likes my couch. No promising that she isn’t going to make us squish. I swear, that girl just wants to be squished into a little tiny box.” Indya shakes her head derisively at Buck’s comment but doesn’t disagree. The three of them — joined occasionally by a fourth — have actually fit on the couch, drunk, and delighted in a video game. Even Indya’s spry back was sore in the morning, but MJ had woken up and curled into an even tighter ball, content smile on her face. In moments like that, she reminds Indya of a cat.

Buck half-heartedly begins to tidy the room, deciding to at least put the yoga things away. He rolls his mat after wiping it down and makes an indignant noise when Indya doesn’t join him. One dramatic sigh later, Indya is helping Buck clean up.

By the time the two of them have put away their things, MJ is opening the door. “Dear lord, Evan, do you not fucking lock your door? Jesus Christ, are you asking to be robbed?”

Buck points at Indya. “Her fault.”

“Babe, I knew you were coming. I unlocked it before Buck and I did a little yoga. It’s all fine.” MJ narrows her eyes at the two before stalking over to the couch, shedding her shoes, jacket, and purse along the way. She collapses with a groan and stretches along the couch, that same content smile making an appearance. 

“After the day I’ve had, I need some cuddles,” she pouts, opening her arms. Buck immediately lays directly on top of her and crushes her with his much larger muscle mass. “Oof, just kidding,” she wheezes. “Indi, come save me from this oaf.”

Indya only laughs. After a minute of Buck not moving, she lightly drags her fingers down the exposed undersides of his feet. It instantly has the desired effect. Buck squirms so much that he falls off the couch, kicking his legs out and squealing. 

After Buck has calmed down, debates revenge, and decides it’s a lost cause, he insists on moving to the bed. “If you want cuddles, MJ, we need a California king and not my shitty sofa.” He’d splurged on the bed after he recovered enough from the explosion to be able to climb stairs. He didn’t want to spend any more time on the couch, so he definitely wasn’t investing in a new one of those. “Go on, I’ll grab some water and snacks. Go cuddle your queen,” Buck drags out the e’s, wiggles his eyebrows, and then quickly backtracks. “With your clothes on. I don’t want your tiddies all over my nice sheets.”

“Oh, but your shitty sheets, those we can fuck on?” MJ asks, smirk so wide it looks like it hurts.

Buck sticks his tongue out.

He turns to the kitchen and ruffles through the cupboards until he finds the water bottles, they prefer — and doesn’t it warm his heart that he knows which of his bottles they like? — and fills them. He grabs some sliced carrots, celery, and apples to toss into a gallon bag. After a second of deliberating in front of his pantry, he shouts, “Sweet or salty?” 

To which MJ instantly responds, “Sweet!”

Buck grabs some chocolate-covered nuts and a bar of chocolate embedded with pretzels.

With his bounty in his arms — four water bottles held to his chest with his right arm and two-gallon bags, one healthy, one sweet, in his left — he bounds upstairs. He drops everything onto the bed to have the girls sort through.

He pauses halfway through taking off his shirt. Can he call them girls? Is that too juvenile? They always call each other queen or woman or madam or something equally strung up and fancy. They worked hard to get to where they are, he knows. He doesn’t want to use language that hurts them, even if it’s just in his brain.

“Evan?” Indya asks. “Not that we don’t enjoy this view of half of your back, but what the fuck are you doing?” 

That jerks him out of his trance and he releases his shirt, letting it fall haphazardly back onto his body. “Is it okay if I call you girls?”

They both raise their brows.

“Not like… fuck, no not like that. I just mean, like, you always call each other these really formal nouns, you know, like ‘queen’ and stuff, and I was just. I called you girls in my head and I don’t know, like, is that okay? I can call you women or whatever, I just wasn’t sure, I wanted to check, I know that you face.”

They start laughing, silencing Buck immediately.

Buck gives them a minute. When they don’t calm enough to respond, he tries again. “I just know that you go through a lot and I never want to.”

This time he’s interrupted by MJ. “No, hun, that’s fine, we understand.”

Indya butts in. “And we love you so, so much for caring so much. But we —”

MJ finishes. “We mostly do that as a joke. You can call me,” she looks at Indya, asking for confirmation, to which she receives a nod, “you can call us girls if that’s the noun you use in your head. Thank you for being so thoughtful, though.”

Buck nods, flushing slightly.

Indya smiles at the look on his face and says, “Really, Evan. Thank you for being considerate and aware of how language can hurt us. But honestly, if the word ‘girl’ hurts us, we would never survive as a pair of lesbian trans women.” Buck nods seriously, and the two women giggle again.

“Besides, do you think I would ever let you say anything, unknowingly or not, that would hurt my baby?” Indya rests her hand on MJ’s thigh and they smile sappily at each other.

“Ugh, stop it, that’s not fair, take your disgusting love somewhere else. Some of us are single, you know.”

Indya rolls her eyes. “Not for lack of me trying, Evan.” He nods in concession. It’s true. No one is more eager for Buck to date than Indya.

Now that he’s settled that, he returns to his dresser and actually takes his shirt off. He pats what little sweat there is off of himself with it, tosses it in the hamper, and tugs on a tank. The bed tends to get hot, with three bodies in it. Especially when MJ and Indya cling. And they always cling.

Buck’s eyes stick together on his next blink, reminding him that he is, in fact, still sick, and he’s dead tired to boot. 

He drinks some water and then falls onto the bed. The three of them squirm around until they’re in a mostly comfortable position. One of MJ’s elbows is digging into Buck on his right, and Indya’s foot is freezing against his leg, but when they turn the tv on and start to talk quietly, Buck is lulled to sleep pretty damn fast.

He’s jerked awake to a loud, insistent knock. Looking at the clock, it’s close to nine at night, close to when he would be getting home from work if he hadn’t called off. 

He drags himself out of bed, prying Indya and MJ’s hands apart so he can actually get up. Stumbling down the stairs, he bats at his cheek, a mostly-melted chocolate-covered almond stuck to it. Buck knows his hair is sleep-rumpled and he still probably looks a little sick, but his neighbors have seen him look worse.

It’s probably Mrs. Stewart from across the hall, asking him for help in changing a lightbulb. He’s supposed to help her call the electrician on his next day off. Her lightbulbs keep going out and Buck is about as much help with figuring out why as eighty-year-old Mrs. Stewart, who insists that Buck calls her Annie and loads him down with sweets every time he so much as passes by her open door.

He wonders if she found out he was sick. It would be just like her, to make him soup.

He opens the door, already talking to her. “Hi Annie, I can come change the —”

Buck stops mid-sentence. 

It is, in fact, not Mrs. Stewart. 

It is Bobby.

Bobby, who hasn’t seen Buck outside of work since the lawsuit. Who is now looking at Buck with chocolate on his cheek, in a ratty muscle tank, loose joggers, and uncombed hair. His skin is undoubtedly a shade or two paler than usual. 

In short, Bobby is looking at the usual Buck. A goddamn mess.

In the silence, Bobby holds out his hands. In them is a pot of what Buck assumes is soup. 

He blinks a couple of times, rubs at his eyes. When he lowers them, his wrist has smeared chocolate on it.

Unfortunately, Bobby is still there.

Buck opens the door all the way and gestures Bobby in.

“You, uh, here for any particular reason, Cap?”

“You’re sick,” Bobby says, as if that explains anything.

“I told you I was fine,” Buck replies, stiffly.

“Yes, but you’ve never been particularly forthcoming about your wellbeing and you have always been horrible at taking care of yourself, so I thought I would come over.”

Buck nods stiffly, glancing at his loft. Indya and MJ are standing at the railing, looking at Buck in shock. Indya mouths what the fuck.

Buck wags his eyebrows and makes a series of facial expressions that he hopes convey the surprise and discomfort that he feels.

While they were communicating, Bobby was making himself at home in the kitchen.

He sets the pot down on the stove and turns the burner on to heat it up. After Bobby is satisfied that it’s good to sit and warm, he opens the other pot on the stove — Indya’s matzo ball soup.

“Oh,” Bobby says. “I, uh, didn’t realize you knew how to make soup. Sorry, Buck, I should have dropped it off earlier. You shouldn’t have to make yourself soup when you’re sick.” Bobby’s mouth twists a little, and Buck can’t tell if it’s because he’s disappointed in himself for not coming sooner or Buck for… well, Buck isn’t sure what he could have possibly done wrong here, but knowing Bobby, it was something.

“I didn’t,” he says tersely.

Indya and MJ head down the stairs quietly.

Indya half raises her hand. “I made it when I came over after he called me this morning.”

Bobby whips around and stares at them in shock. He looks between them and Buck, looks at the bag of chocolates in MJ’s hand and the stain on Buck’s face that he’s been too tired to completely wipe off. His lips flatten into nothing — a thin, straight line.

“Buck, you really shouldn’t be having sex or doing anything too strenuous when you’re sick. You don’t know where they’ve been, and while I’m sure they’re nice, picking two girls up is probably what got you sick.”

Buck’s jaw drops and his eyes start to water.

He knew that Bobby had a low opinion of him, but for the man to assume that he went out while he was sick and picked up two girls to bring home and fuck? When he knows everything that Buck has gone through to have a healthier relationship to sex? For him to think that Buck is completely and utterly incapable of taking care of himself or making even one good decision? For two years, he’d thought that Bobby knew him better than anyone but Eddie. Is this what he really is?

His downward spiral is interrupted by Indya’s angry voice.

“Get out.”

Bobby looks surprised at the malice in her voice.

“Look, like I said, I didn’t mean any harm to you girls. It’s just, Buck here has a track record, and well. He’s sick.”

“Did you miss the part where I came over to make him the soup, you dense asshole? I said get the fuck out. No one is allowed to speak to Evan like that, let alone in his own home. He might let you assholes treat him like dirt, but I will never let that happen while I’m around. Get. Out.”

She resorts to physically pushing him. Bobby is too stunned by her tirade to stop her, so he allows himself to be pushed out the door. This girl, who he has never seen before, never heard of before, then stamps over, grabs his pot, and turns off the burner. She hands him the soup and says, “And do not come back,” before slamming the door in his face.

~  
  
After a rather monotonous day of low-risk calls, Bobby heads to Buck’s apartment. He can’t help but be worried about the kid, even after all of the shit that he’s put the 118 through in the last year. Knowing Buck, he either hasn’t left bed or he’s put himself through the wringer — burned soup, cleaned his whole apartment, tried to put together something from Ikea… who knows with Buck. 

When he gets to Buck’s apartment, at first, he knocks normally, in case he is up and about. But when that fails, he knocks a little louder, slowly increasing the tempo until he has to pause to give his knuckles a break.

When Buck jerks the door open, neither of Bobby’s expectations are met. It’s obvious he’s gotten out of bed, and at least eaten something, according to the melted chocolate on his cheek. But he obviously just got out of bed, too. His hair is mussed like someone has been running their fingers through it. His tank is rucked up above his hip and his joggers are low on his hips.

He’s pale, Bobby notes. But that’s to be expected if he’s sick.

In short, Buck looks like a mess.

Buck says, “Hi Annie, I can come and change the —” but he stops speaking when he sees it is Bobby. His tongue is still touching his teeth, mouth open to start a new word. Bobby wonders who Annie is. Probably not a woman he’s seeing. He says her name like he says Chim’s name — casual but familiar. He wonders who this woman is that Buck knows like that but doesn’t mention around the firehouse. He’s pretty sure he knows everyone that Buck knows. He must’ve mentioned her before.

Without acknowledging Annie, he holds out his pot. He’d wrapped it in plastic wrap before he left the station, so not much soup spilled out. He hadn’t even needed the dishtowel he’d put on his passenger seat.

Buck rubs at his eyes and further smears the chocolate on his cheek. Bobby winces a little. Buck looks like he would rather be back under that fire truck than see his captain right now. “You, uh, here for any particular reason, Cap?”

Bobby raises his eyebrows. “You’re sick,” he says. He doesn’t say, ‘who is going to take care of you if I don’t?’, but he means it. He’s sure Buck picks up on that because he looks even more uncomfortable than he did previously. Bobby wonders what he’s saying wrong. Before the explosion, Bobby always knew how to act around Buck. When a firm pat on the shoulder would suffice to get him to stop whatever shenanigan he was currently up to and when he needed a sterner talking to.

“I told you I was fine,” Buck replies like his mouth is full of nails.

Bobby snorts a little. The kid had practically said he was fine three days after his first surgery. Fine, Bobby’s ass. He wouldn’t know fine if it bit him on the left testicle. “Yes, but you’ve never been particularly forthcoming about your wellbeing and you have always been horrible at taking care of yourself, so I thought I would come over.”

Buck acquiesces and opens the door to his apartment wide enough that Bobby can shoulder his way in. 

He strides over to the kitchen and unwraps the pot over Buck’s interestingly empty sink. There’s a ladle, two mugs, and what looks like parsley. Bobby was unaware that Buck knew what parsley is. The spilled broth drips down the drain and Bobby leaves the disgusting plastic wrap where it falls. 

When he fixes his attention on the stove, there is another pot. Bobby’s eyebrows raise back up to what he’s come to call ‘Buck position’ in his internal monologue. It’s rarely a good thing, so Bobby expects a pot full of ruined broth.

What he finds, however, is a beautifully smelling pot of soup. Bobby’s brows raise a touch further. Matzo ball soup? He narrows his eyes. Buck was raised Protestant, although his parents were more Christmas-and-Easter sorts. Buck hasn’t stepped foot in a church since he moved out. And Bobby doesn’t know any Jewish people, or at least, ones that would teach Buck about matzo balls.

“Oh,” Bobby says. “I, uh, didn’t realize you knew how to make soup. Sorry, Buck, I should have dropped it off earlier. You shouldn’t have to make yourself soup when you’re sick.”

He knows that Buck has been lonely while the 118 readjusts to this new understanding of Buck. Learning that he could betray their trust so easily wasn’t something the team had recovered from yet. But just because they haven’t recovered from the betrayal doesn’t mean that Buck should have to make his own soup. But the job comes first. Buck would just have to understand that he was working.

“I didn’t.” 

Now Buck looks like he did that one time he ate so many Warheads he lost an entire layer of tongue. He probably just tasted a bit of stomach acid. 

Maybe Annie brought the soup over.

“I made it when I came over after he called me this morning.” A beautiful girl descends the steps, another one following closely behind. They both have exquisite bone structure and tight curls. They don’t look at all done up — they look like Buck if he was Black and not sick. Their lips are a touch swollen and red, hair mussed up. Their clothes are loose-fitting and barely on. The girl who spoke is wearing one of Buck’s shirts. It’s so big it falls off her shoulder.

The one closer to the stairs, with a narrow face, is holding a bag of chocolates around the same shape as the smear on Buck’s cheek. 

Now Bobby is the one eating Warheads.

He knows that Buck has… sexual tendencies, especially when he doesn’t feel 100%, but he never thought that Buck would use his sick time as an excuse to get laid, even if it is with two beautiful women, not after all the teaching Bobby has done since he was hired.

“Buck, you really shouldn’t be having sex or doing anything too strenuous when you’re sick. You don’t know where they’ve been, and while I’m sure they’re nice, picking two girls up is probably what got you sick.”

Buck looks like he’s been punched. His eyes glisten and his fists tighten. His shoulders curl in on themselves. 

Bobby wonders what’s wrong. Is he feeling nauseous?

He thinks over what he just said and what he knows of Buck, when it clicks. He sort of insinuated the girls are dirty, didn’t he? Buck has never stood for misogyny.

Bobby is still processing that thought when it’s interrupted by the one closer to the kitchen, with a squarer face saying, “Get out.”

She looks furious. She looks like she’s going to start punching things and Bobby is surprised — she holds a lot of anger for a girl a good six inches shorter than Buck. His employee could probably bench press the both of the girls combined, but now, Buck looks small enough to hide behind one of them.

“Look, like I said, I didn’t mean any harm to you girls. It’s just, Buck here has a track record, and well. He’s sick.” He really didn’t mean to insinuate that they have STDs or anything. He looks to Buck in reassurance, trying to convey that he would never disrespect a girl that Buck chooses to sleep with, even if he fundamentally disagrees with the choice to have sex right now.

If anything, though, that just makes the girl angrier. She’s nearly shaking now. “Did you miss the part where I came over to make him the soup, you dense asshole? I said get the fuck out. No one is allowed to speak to Evan like that, let alone in his own home. He might let you assholes treat him like dirt, but I will never let that happen while I’m around. Get. Out.” Her eyes look beyond mean — they look cruel. Her mouth is twisted into something ugly, and she marches over to Bobby and unceremoniously shoves him out of the apartment.

Maybe he wasn’t supposed to know they were having sex? But what could Buck expect — Bobby has always seen through his bullshit in the past, why would that stop now?

She nearly runs to the stove, throws the lid back on his pot, and more carefully turns it to him, ensuring that none of the broth spills.

“And do not come back.”

Any effort to preserve Bobby’s soup is foiled when she slams the door in his face, spilling the vast majority of the broth onto him, soaking his button-down shirt, undershirt, jeans, and leaking into his loafers.

The lock clicks, and it hits Bobby like a gunshot.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buck does his best to cope with the Incident (tm). Bobby has no idea what the fuck is going on.

Buck is shaking by the time Indya locks Bobby out of Buck’s apartment. His eyes are brimming with tears but he refuses to let any fall, fisting his eyes and likely smearing the chocolate on his face all over his cheek. 

He scoffs at his weakness — it’s no wonder that Bobby didn’t want him back in the field. If he can’t handle Bobby so effectively seeing him, how the hell could he expect any of his team members to trust him? Buck has always felt emotion more sharply than the people around him and it rarely bothers him, but in moments like this, where he gets absolutely eviscerated, he wishes that he could be more like Eddie. Wishes he could put everything in a box and just… deal with it later.

Eyes trained on the floor, he makes his way back upstairs. Going into the bathroom, he firmly shuts the door and turns the little lock on the handle. It wouldn’t keep out anyone with a bobby pin — which both Indya and MJ have in abundance — but it makes it clear that Buck doesn’t want to talk to them.

He turns the shower on as hot as it goes and stands under the painful heat. The leftover chocolate-covered almond melts away from his cheek. If he’s crying, there’s no one to tell. When his shoulders shake, he lets himself pretend it is because he’s exhausted, because he’s nauseous again — anything but sobs he’s trying to repress. 

By the time MJ pokes the bathroom lock open, the hot water is all gone. It’s painful, how cold it is, and Buck’s ass has gone entirely numb from how he’s sitting, curled up on the floor of the tub. MJ turns the water off and throws a towel over his head. 

“Dry off and put those clothes on.” She points at a stack of clothing on his sink and waits until Buck nods to leave.

Now that he has left his head and can focus on something other than the hazy tile in front of his eyes, he can hear angry seething in the other room. It’s Indya, Buck knows, but he doesn’t have the energy to listen to what she’s saying. It’s enough to know that she’s still angry, probably a half-hour later. He pats himself dry, not particularly carefully, and roughly dries his hair with the shirt he was wearing before the shower. 

He tugs on the sweats, shirt, and jacket that MJ left without processing what they are and leaves the bathroom to collapse in bed. 

The TV is still playing.

Buck has no idea what is on.

He curls up in bed, not even bothering to get under the covers. He tucks his chin to his chest and closes his eyes, willing to stay in this position until his bad leg cramps too much for him to remain still.

That time comes maybe an hour later.

He uncurls and opens his eyes, blinking at the dimness of the setting sun. Indya and MJ are nowhere to be found. He has a moment of searing pain, thinking that they finally left him, that they found out about his past as a whore and assumed he was just waiting to sleep with them, that they finally saw him for who he truly is and left.

But as powerful as his insecurities are, he knows Indya too well. She knew his past even before they were friends and she never gave a shit. She is too kind to care how much of a slut he was. As cruel as his mind can be, he will never let it be cruel to the people he loves — even accidentally.

While he isn’t as close to MJ as he is to Indya, any anxiety he has about her judgment dissolves as he sees her climb his stairs with two mugs of steaming soup, a bag of his favorite popcorn tucked under her left elbow. 

She flashes a small smile at him, waits for him to sit up, and presses the warm mug into his hands. The heat leaches into his hands and jerks him fully into the present. He hadn’t truly processed how disassociated he’d been until he wasn’t anymore. He furrows his brow, looking to MJ for an explanation.

She shakes her head a little. “Indya had to go to work, but I’m off tomorrow, so I’m staying here.” He raises his eyebrows, asking for more details. “You were out of it for a couple of hours.” Buck’s eyebrows don’t fall back down.

“C’mon, MJ. I don’t remember what happened. I know Bobby was here, but then, it’s just hazy. What the fuck did I do that made me disassociate for so long?”

Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say. MJ’s face twists in anger, an expression Buck has never seen on her before. She’s always been upbeat and happy — it’s why she balances so well with Indya — that this face almost makes him nervous. He must have really fucked up.

“I’ll tell you, but only because I can’t bear to have you think you did anything wrong.”

Buck’s eyebrows sink and then shoot back up, higher than they were before. Did they turn on the news? He casts his mind around for a different explanation. It wasn’t the anniversary of the explosion or tsunami, and the other shitstorms the 118 has been through are too recent to be the subject of another story, so the news is out.

What else could have possibly happened to trigger such a bad mental state?

“I can’t believe you called that man your pseudo-father.” 

Oh. Bobby? Buck is only getting more confused. As much as he wants to sink back into the relative peace of nothingness, he wants to know what happened.

“He stormed in here like he owned the place and then started shitting on you, thinking that Indi and I are some girls you picked up at a bar. He basically said you weren’t capable of taking care of yourself and sort of insinuated we are dirty. Indi was so mad; it was honestly beautiful. She kicked him out and said he wasn’t allowed to treat you like that.”

Buck takes a minute to process. That fits with the hazy picture he had in his mind, Indya yelling, Bobby with soup.

“The thing, MJ, is that his assumption wasn’t coming out of nowhere. I mean, I’m not sure how much Indya told you, but for a while, I was a huge whore. I can see why he would think I called out of work to have sex. Plus, I mean, he probably saw you and assumed — you are both my type.” Buck knows that Indya is quick with righteous anger and he doesn’t want MJ thinking that Bobby is a bad guy. “It doesn’t sound like he said anything too off-base.”

The twist in MJ’s face has only gotten more severe.

“First of all, Evan, I know absolutely nothing of your past, because Indi would never tell me anything you told her in confidence, and I know you know that, so I’m going to pretend you didn’t insinuate that. Second, I do not care how much sex you have had or are currently having, no one is allowed to talk to you like you’re worthless. I mean, he came in here and insulted you to your face. Strangers on the street aren’t allowed to do that, let alone your employer in your own damn home.”

MJ is ever-so-slightly out of breath. Her cheeks are blushing and Buck can see some of Indya’s anger has rubbed off on her.

“Jesus, Buck, you’ve spent all day puking your guts out, and no offense, you look like it. If you were any paler, I would see your goddamn spine. You called this man your father. He should be able to tell that you’ve been way too fucking sick to have sex.”

Buck opens his mouth, hoping to cut in, but MJ is clearly not done. She whips her finger at him, pointing right at his mouth and shaking her head once.

“Besides, even if you did call out of work to fuck two beautiful trans lesbians, why the fuck does he care? You are allowed to call out of work for whatever reason you fucking want. You get paid time off for a reason, Evan, and it isn’t so you can jump off buildings or whatever the fuck it is you do to hurt yourself.”

Buck could see her point of view right up until that. He plows through whatever her next point was, gently pushing her hand down. “No, MJ, I can’t just call off whenever. Every time I call off, I put my team in danger because they’re a man down. That can be life or death in an emergency. Time off is only to be used when it’s really needed.”

MJ scoffs and opens her mouth in what Buck is sure is a scathing rebuttal.

“Please, MJ, can we just leave this for now? I’m still groggy and I want to finish my soup.”

MJ is still breathing ever-so-slightly-heavier than normal, eyes narrowed at Buck, lips tight. “I’ll leave it, but only because you are sick. And I’m telling Indi that you’re blaming yourself for this absolute shit show.”

Buck rolls his eyes. For all of Indya’s talk, she’s tiny and Buck is massive. She doesn’t pose any real threat to him.

Buck and MJ drink their soup in silence only occasionally broken by a huff from MJ.

When the mugs are empty and put off to the side, Buck wrestles his way under the covers and falls asleep almost instantly. 

~

Bobby stands outside Buck’s door, stunned. Whatever he had expected to happen when he got to Buck’s, it wasn’t that. He honestly isn’t sure what happened at all. But he does know that whoever that was, she has some hold over Buck, if she is allowed to remove Bobby — not just anyone, Buck’s boss and friend — from his apartment with no argument from Buck. So, any attempt to ask Buck what the absolute hell just happened would have to wait until she left. 

Buck had tomorrow off, too. Would they be staying through that?

Bobby has no idea what to expect. 

So, he retreats. He takes his mostly-empty soup pot down to his car and strips off any unnecessary layers that are soaked in soup. That leaves his undershirt and jeans on. He crawls into the backseat of his car and squirms out of his pants, slipping on the pair of shorts he keeps in his emergency bag. You never know how many pairs of clothing you’re going to go through at work. He swaps his undershirt for the very-similar plain white shirt in the bag, peels off his socks, and tugs on his socks and sneakers.

He sits in his car for a minute, wondering what the hell went wrong.

He needs to call Hen. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hen tries to explain things to Bobby. He doesn't quite get it.

Bobby drives to a nearby park, not quite ready to go home. He doesn’t think that this is something he can explain to Athena. He’s not even sure he can explain what just happened to Hen, and they made the plan together. Athena, who has mostly been in the dark about Buck’s recent charade, would almost certainly be confused and angry that Buck is making so many poor choices. Bobby doesn’t think a conversation between Athena and that angry girl would end well for anyone, least of all him.

He pulls his phone out of his front pocket and calls Hen.

She picks up immediately. He knows she’s likely been waiting by the phone anxiously ever since shift ended. She’s almost more worried about Buck than he is.

“Hey, Hen…” Bobby isn’t sure what to say. He’d thought about it a little on his drive to the park, but no words came to him. His brain is completely empty, just a white slate with a little black question mark in the middle.

“How did it go? Is he okay?” 

“Hen — I — it went very confusingly. I’m at the park we went to two weeks ago, sort of between everyone’s houses.” it doesn’t slip either of their notice that the teammate that lives furthest away is Buck, but neither of them says anything now, just as they didn’t say anything then. “I’m still sort of processing. Can you meet me over here?”

Bobby can hear rustling and clattering in the background and he knows she’s on her way. His abnormal behavior is likely just freaking Hen out more, so he stops to soothe her. “Don’t worry Hen. He was a little pale but he’d obviously been out of bed and at least eaten something. He didn’t make any…” He isn’t sure how to continue at this point. “Any massive mistakes. Buck and his apartment are still in one piece.”

“Mistakes? Bobby, I’m not worried about him making mistakes, he’s a grown-ass man! I’m worried that he thinks we don’t care about him! I’ll be at the park in twenty minutes.” Hen hangs up on him.

Apparently, he can’t say anything right.

By the time Hen shows up, he has bitten nearly all of the skin off of his lip and he is even more certain that he really, really fucked up. He still just doesn’t know where.

She sits on the bench next to him and ruminates in the relative peace of the park for a heavy moment. “Okay, tell me what happened.”

Bobby relates all of it to her — how uncomfortable Buck seemed, the new Annie woman, the other two new women, the yelling, the spilled soup — and the longer he talks, the worse Hen looks.

Her eyes fill with tears and she looks, frankly, furious. 

The heavy silence from before returns after he is done. 

She pinches the bridge of her nose between her right thumb and forefinger, sighing. She takes several even breathes before sitting up straight and making direct eye contact for the first time since they were on shift together over two hours ago.

“Bobby, all I can really say is what the actual fuck were you thinking?”

He can tell she’s mad. He still doesn’t know why. His jaw is hanging open, he knows, and he’s gesturing at nothing. 

Hen blinks a couple of times, firm like she’s willing away tears.

“Bobby, let me tell you what I just heard you say. I heard that you showed up and told Buck you still don’t believe he can take care of himself and that you don’t think he knows anyone or is capable of making any friends, outside of work. You then sort of insinuated these two girls were dirty and I know that you tried to say that isn’t what you meant, but who cares. Then, despite one of the girls telling you that she was there to take care of Buck, you continued to say he is a whore, hasn’t learned or grown, and can’t take care of himself despite being a grown-ass man.”

She pauses to take a breath and looks back at Bobby. 

“I’m not done, Bobby, but I’m going to give you a minute to understand what I just said because I honestly do not think you will ever comprehend the magnitude of damage that you have just done.”

She isn’t done? Jesus. He hadn’t meant any of it like that, but looking back, thinking about Buck’s face, he can guess that’s how Buck took it. And maybe that was a bit unfair. But still — Buck doesn’t have friends outside of the station. Isn’t that why he’d betrayed their trust in the first place? To supposedly get back to them?

And, yeah, Bobby knows that he’s done a lot of teaching with Buck while he’s been working at the 118, but everyone relapses. Buck had pretended he’d had a sex addiction, right? Well, Bobby knows the face of addiction all too well, and even if Buck’s was a self-diagnosis, Bobby reasons that Buck could fall back into his past just like Bobby did. 

Okay, maybe Bobby had been a little harsh. But he hadn’t been totally off base, and he had definitely been well-meaning. That always counted, right?

Right?

“And Bobby, I’m very concerned about your mindset with Buck. You went over to his house after we had that discussion of how much we have alienated him and how concerned I am about his mental health and the biggest thing you were worried about is what? That he had destroyed his apartment? That he’d made a mistake? He’s sick, Bobby. That boy doesn’t take a sick day for shit.”

“Hen, you didn’t see those girls, though. They’d obviously been… active, and they’d definitely just emerged from Buck’s bed. Wearing his clothes. And, c’mon, Hen, you know Buck. I’ve taught him a lot but we hadn’t really gotten to soups yet. I was just worried that he’d burned something. I wasn’t trying to demean him, or anything.”

Hen looks sad. Looks like she’s been missing a puzzle piece for a while and finally found it, but instead of finding it under the table, she’d found it in some of Nia’s shit.

“Bobby, you obviously are very defensive right now and aren’t listening to what I’m saying. So, I’m going to say one last thing, and then I’m going home.”

Bobby nods, numb.

“We have spent the last six months isolating that boy from his family. He obviously went out and found new friends that love him, and when you finally realized that Buck was hurting, you went over there and hurt him some more. I know you didn’t mean to, but you quite obviously did. I was pretty sure we could reconcile things earlier today, but now Bobby?”

She’d been staring off into the distance, before, looking straight ahead and not seeing anything. Now, she turns and looks at Bobby, her eyes finally brimming over with tears.

“I’m not sure we will ever see that boy again. Not really. And we only have ourselves to blame.”

At that, Hen gets up and leaves. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof baboof. I've had a... ahaha #great mental health last couple of weeks, so I haven't been writing. Shout out to Xx, who commented asking for an update, which guilted me into writing this.
> 
> Your comments and kudos make every day a little easier. I appreciate every one of them. <3
> 
> I'm just posting this for now because it's what I wrote, but now that my fingers are a little looser, I will try to continue to update more regularly.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hen works up the courage to reach out to Buck.

She doesn’t drive right to Buck’s house, necessarily. She does drive in almost the same path she would take to get there, ending up a block or two away. Not anywhere that he would see her, but close enough that if she decides to go in, it wouldn’t take more than five minutes to get to his front door.

Hen mulls over everything while she sits in the car, drumming absently on the steering wheel. She’s torn between going home to Karen and crying, maybe never leaving bed again, and storming into Buck’s apartment and begging for forgiveness. 

If she were Buck, what would she want? That’s the root of her problem, Hen realizes. She tries to be empathetic before everything, but she can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to be in Buck’s position. What she wants right now, more than anything, is to make Buck feel better.

The headrest of the driver’s seat makes a hollow thunk noise when Hen hits her head against it. No, that isn’t the root of her problem.

The real root of the problem — what caused this whole situation — was everyone at the 118 assuming they could possibly understand what it was like to be in Buck’s shoes. They couldn’t. Even Hen, the most empathetic of all of them, couldn’t even begin. And instead of just asking Buck what he needed, they assumed they knew better than him and did what they wanted to do.

Well, Hen decides, that stops now.

She pulls out her phone to call Buck only to realize that it’s nearing nine pm. As much as she wants to make things right, she hasn’t eaten since the gobbled meal at the station around noon and is dead tired. Nothing productive would happen with her so desperate and out of sorts.

The best thing to do at this point is to go home, tuck Denny in, kiss her wife, and take care of herself. She can only hope that Buck’s new friends will help him take care of himself, too. 

She sets an alarm around the time she knows Buck gets up — 6 am — and heads home.

Karen hasn’t been completely in the dark about the Buck Situation ™ but understanding the depths of the mistakes the 118 has made is something that Hen is only just beginning to tackle. She isn’t sure how to explain everything to her wife. How could she explain how deeply they have isolated Buck? Karen and Buck have never been friends, really, but Buck has babysat and she’s been around him enough to see the light that he exudes. How in the hell is Hen supposed to explain her part in dimming that light?

It turns out that she doesn’t, really. She gets home to a stern and concerned gaze, tucks in Denny, and is just warming up leftovers when Karen enters the kitchen. She takes the plate out of Hen’s hands and pushes her to the kitchen table.

“I’ll take care of this while you share.”

It isn’t a request.

“I… It’s Buck.” She doesn’t know how to explain, spreads her fingers apart like the words will just fall out of the sky. “He… We… I really, really fucked up.”

Karen looks up sharply. “That boy has been through an awful lot this year. You mean to say that you piled on that?”

“I… In truth, Karen, I think I did. I think maybe the 118 hurt Buck more than anything else has and I just stood by and watched it happen. Maybe most of the actions were done by Bobby and Eddie, but how is it any better to have sat by and watched it happen with no more than a consolation cupcake?” She looks at her wife. Karen sometimes has a wisdom that Hen sees her pull from nowhere, like a magician. Maybe she has some now.

Hen has no such luck.

She shakes her head and then rests her forehead in her hands. “I don’t know that I can ever fix what I’ve done. But I’m going to try. I’m going to call him tomorrow and ask him what he wants me to do. And I’m going to listen. I’ll do…” The lump in Hen’s throat makes it nearly impossible for the words to come out. “I’ll do whatever I can to make sure that even if it isn’t with us, that he’s happy and safe.”

Karen nods gently, holding the warmed-up meal with two oven mitts. She puts the plate in front of Hen, giving her the softest look Hen’s seen in a long while.

“I’m going to bed, Hen. You finish up in here and join me, okay?”

Hen nods, still heartbroken. She eats what she can stomach before joining her wife in restless sleep.

The morning comes — Karen is not thrilled to be woken up by Hen’s alarm — to Hen rolling out of bed. She wants to head over to Buck’s favorite cafe and get herself breakfast. Then, she plans on calling him from a park.

She doesn’t anticipate him being willing to meet, but if he is, she wants to have a plethora of choices that are near his apartment for him to choose from. She isn’t the most comfortable in this neighborhood — has never been to this park and doesn’t know this street, other than what she’s heard from Buck — but she knows that Buck loves it here. She wants to give him the home-court advantage and she knows that he would give it up, even to someone that hurt him as badly as Hen has.

She gets Buck’s favorite drink — a latte with just a touch of nutmeg — and a pastry with lots of jam before taking a stroll to a bench. She can see why Buck likes it here. It’s bustling already. Lots of runners and bikers, plenty of families and dogs. 

It’s almost 7:15 when she drags up the courage to call him.

It goes to voicemail.

“Hey, it’s Evan Buckley. Leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

His voicemail is impersonal, doesn’t even use his nickname. She can tell it’s old.

“Hey, Buck,” She drags the words out. She should have written this down. “It’s Hen. Well, you know that. I just… I realized recently how incredibly shitty we have been to you. I want to make it right. I know…” She swallows firmly to get rid of the coming quiver in her voice. “I know it may never be possible for things to get back to the way they were, but I would like to maintain some sort of relationship with you. I’ll do that on your terms. If you want to call or text or whatever—” she scrambles to eliminate any seeming demands from her message. “I’ll let you set the terms. Or, um. Or you can not respond.”

She lets the voicemail sit for a few seconds. “I love you, Buck. I know I haven’t shown it recently, but I would like to start showing it again. I won’t beg, not unless you say it’s okay. I just want you to be happy. Goodbye.”

She buries her face in her hands, trying her best to stifle her sobs. She can tell her shoulders shake, though, and she ignores the person who’s rude enough to plop down on the bench next to her. She can hear the ragged pants — probably a runner — but she’s too wrapped up in her own emotionality to look up and ask them to move along.

Once she does lift her head, she instantly hears, “Hen?”

Jesus Christ. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was playing a bit of catch up, here, so I haven't been entirely sure how to format chapters. Buck's panic attack and recovery happened while Bobby was driving to the park, waiting at the park for Hen, and then talking with Hen. 
> 
> Buck's moment with MJ happened while Hen was sitting in her car.
> 
> Now, I think, all of the characters are back on the same timeline. I may end up writing some of what Bobby does after Hen leaves, but probably not. Maybe. We'll see.
> 
> If the order/timeline of things is confusing, let me know. I'll do what I can to rectify that.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buck and Hen have a chat.

Well, she certainly hadn’t intended to ambush Buck, even if that is sort of what happened anyway. She hadn’t thought that he would be out and about, not at this hour. 

She quickly wipes her face of the tears that escaped and takes a deep breath before turning to face Buck. He looks concerned, eyebrows pinched together, but he also looks pale. A little sick, still. She tries to smile and pretend nothing is wrong, but she can tell it’s a wobbly one. Buck’s slight frown only deepens as his eyes rove across her face.

“Are you okay?” Somehow, that is the worst thing he could have said. They’ve been treating him like garbage for so long and all he has in his heart is concern. She deserves — well, she doesn’t know quite what she deserves but his kindness certainly isn’t it.

“Buck,” she sighs out his name and presses her lips together to prevent another tear from escaping. “I’m okay, Buck. I — I came here to call you. I just left you a voicemail.” He raises an eyebrow at that. His frown has lifted a touch, but he still looks worried. Worried about Hen.

‘Jesus Christ’ wasn’t a strong enough utterance.

“I’m… I’m going to go get a bottle of water from —” She gestures to the cafe behind her. “Can you listen to the voicemail, please? I’ll, um, see you after you do.” Or, maybe, she won’t. Maybe he’ll continue his run and never respond to her again. That, Hen thinks, is what she deserves.

Buck nods slowly, tracking her as she walks back to the cafe. Once she gets inside, she lets herself look back at him. His phone is pressed to his ear, that she can tell, but the glare from the window and the distance prevent her from being able to really see his facial expressions. She turns abruptly so if he decides to leave, he can do so in peace.

She isn’t really thirsty, though, so she waits inside for another few minutes before leaving the building. Her gaze snaps immediately to the bench as she braces for the absence of Buck. 

He’s there.

All the air inside her leaves. She has to steady herself on the building with her left hand, her right rising to press at her heart, trying to slow its pace with pressure alone. Buck’s looking at her, ass half off the bench, obviously concerned about her and ready to respond if she needs it. Hen shakes her head once firmly and heads back to him.

Once she’s nearer the bench, though, she can’t decide what to do. Sitting feels presumptuous — it’s still possible he’s only waiting to tell her to fuck off face-to-face — but she doesn’t want to stand over him like she’s his disappointed teacher.

Instead, she settles for plopping on the grass a foot or two in front of Buck. He’s tall so she has to crane her neck to make eye contact.

He doesn’t look relieved, exactly, at her seating choice. A little confused, obviously, but not disappointed or happy. There’s a lot going on in his expression. Hen could probably spend hours trying to parse out how he feels.

Instead, for the first time in probably a year, she asks. 

“So. What are you thinking?”

Hen waits while he thinks, trying not to fidget too much. She listens to the sound of runners chatting with each other and the trees rustling. If she wasn’t so on edge waiting for Buck’s response, she would enjoy this park. She can see why Buck loves it so much.

“I’m not sure, Hen. Especially with.” He pauses, for a moment. “With what Bobby said yesterday, I’m pretty certain I’ll be changing stations. MJ and I talked about it a bit. I don’t know that I could ever work under him again, not with how he sees me.”

Hen nods and stubbornly refuses to allow a single tear to fall. This heartbreak isn’t on Buck and he shouldn’t feel guilty for how Hen is reacting to her own terrible actions. And knowing Buck, he would feel guilty as all hell.

She was right, though, yesterday. Things would never be how they were before. Not if Buck is thinking about leaving. Is leaving, it sounds like. Even the thought of a Buck-less house makes Hen’s heart hurt. 

“And you haven’t been as cruel as Bobby and Eddie, but I can’t deny that I’m really hurt. It feels good to hear that you understand how much everything you guys did hurt, but it doesn’t exactly make it hurt less.”

Hen nods again. She knew this was going to happen, knew that even if Buck said he forgave her, it couldn’t possibly be genuine, not with how he’s been treated in the last six months. So, she had tried to prepare herself for this.

She'd failed.

“But, even with everything that happened, I still love the 118. It was my family for a while and even though —” Buck pauses and swallows. Hen, now, can read him clear as day. There’s so much pain in his eyes. He looks gutted, like. Well, Hen supposes, he looks like he’d fought like hell to get back to the only family he’d ever known and they punished him for it.

“Even though I guess I was the only one that felt that way, I still love everyone.”

Jesus Christ.

Apparently, the hurt they’d dealt out went even deeper than Hen’d imagined. Even with how they’ve been treating Buck, she had never imagined that he would doubt that they are, or were, a family. 

She presses the heels of her palm into her eyes to wipe away the tears that emerge and to abate any more that are trying to pop out. 

When she’s sure that she won’t burst into tears, she emerges. Buck is studying her.

Hen opens her mouth and almost immediately closes it. Buck’s pace of speaking hasn’t been steady, exactly, and he deserves all the time he needs to get his thoughts out. She doesn’t want to interrupt a thought. 

But Buck nods at her, giving his permission for her to speak. It feels like retribution for all the times that Buck has tried to talk during his shifts and been shut down.

“Buck, I don’t even know where to start. I’m so so sorry for sitting back and letting this happen at all. I need you to know that you have always been my family. You are my little brother and no matter how this conversation ends or how our relationship looks in the future, you will always be my little brother.”

Buck’s shoulder hunch in on themselves and Hen has to stop herself from jumping up to hug him. Instead, she scooches a little closer and puts a hand on his left knee. She can feel his muscles jump in surprise but when she goes to draw her hand away, Buck shoots his hand out to put it on top of hers.

He doesn’t tuck his fingers under her palm as he might have before all of this. But Hen will take anything she can get. At this point, Buck’s hand on top of hers feels like she just climbed a mountain. He never manages to stop surprising her, that boy. 

She gives him a minute to collect himself before continuing. “Everything that has happened has happened because of our fucked-up family dynamics. Bobby told me what he said yesterday and I had a serious talk with him about his mindset about you. I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner.” Buck shrinks in on himself even more.

Hen pauses for a moment to think. “Would it be okay if I gave my input on you changing stations? Feel free to say no.”

He pauses for a moment and that relieves some of the concern Hen holds. He isn’t just saying what would make Hen feel good — he’s thinking about what he needs. She takes a moment to feel deeply proud of the man in front of her.

The nod he gives feels like another mountain scaled.

“As someone that knows Bobby and used to know you,” Hen heaves a breath at the thought of no longer knowing Buck, but she can’t deny the truth any longer. “I do not think that Bobby can be a good captain right now, particularly when it comes to you. I think that MJ sounds like they have a good head on their shoulders. I will completely support whatever decision you make. I understand why you want to leave. I will miss you, Buck, more than you can know, but I think Bobby has been making some truly horrible decisions and if you need to escape that to be healthy and happy, that’s what you do.”

Buck’s shoulders visibly raise, as if he had been bracing for Hen to criticize him. He nods jerkily a few times and sniffs a little. When he raises his head slightly to look at her, she isn’t surprised to see his eyes brimming with tears.

“Thank you, Hen.”

She squeezes his knee in response.

“I don’t want to say that I’ll never talk to you again. But I’m not sure…” He drifts off a little, obviously lost in thought.

Hen will give him all the time in the world. It’s nearing 8:30 now, Hen thinks. She doesn’t have anywhere to be until noon. 

“I can’t see Bobby. Or Eddie. Or maybe even Chim. I’ve been… avoiding Maddie, lately. Because, well. You know how they are.” Hen nods. Combined at the hip, the two of them. Like how Buck and Eddie used to be. 

That thought hurts, too. Used to be. Everything with Buck and the 118 is in the past tense, now. 

The pause here lingers and Hen thinks Buck is looking for some sort of response.

“I’ll do whatever you want me to, honey.” Buck melts a little at the nickname. It’s been a while since he heard it, Hen realizes.

“If I arrange a coffee date with her, could you make sure he’s occupied? So there’s no chance he tries to come.”

“Of course!” Hen responds in a rush. Of all the things that he could have asked for, that he deserves, this is the least she can do.

She bites her tongue to stop herself from asking if they can have a coffee date. No pressure, she reminds herself. 

“You can text me the details and I will make sure Chim stays away.”

Buck looks relieved and Hen can’t stop herself. “You can also text for, uh, anything else you might need.”

It isn’t outright asking to talk to him more — to see him more — but it’s pretty close. The relieved expression doesn’t leave his face, if anything, it intensifies a little, so Hen figures she didn’t fuck that up too badly.

From Buck’s fidgety gaze and a quick glance at her watch — almost 9:00 — she deduces that he is ready to go. 

“Okay, well, Karen is expecting me, so I should head out.” She squeezes his knee again. He nods and Hen can tell it’s the out he needed.

She heaves herself to her feet, a little too old to be sitting criss-cross-applesauce on uneven ground, and pats herself off.

“Goodbye, Buck. I love you.” Buck accepts her goodbye but obviously isn’t ready to return one, so Hen pivots and begins to walk away.

When she’s gotten ten or so feet, Buck calls out.

“Hen?”

She immediately stops and turns to look at him.

“I’ll text you."


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buck does his best to deal with his interaction with Hen. He reaches out to Maddie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> discussion of dissociation and allusions to panic-induced violence

What… the fuck was that?

Buck had hoped and dreamed that he would be truly forgiven by the 118, though he had long given up on that supposed-pipe-dream. To have Hen not only be willing to speak to him, not only for her to reach out first, but to see her obviously torn up because of how he had been treated… It is beyond anything Buck had ever thought would happen.

Buck sits on the bench for a long while, letting the edge dig into his thighs and make them tingly.

After his disastrous encounter with Bobby, he had actually gone through the painful process of filling out his transfer forms. He isn’t submitting them yet — he’s planning on inviting Indya and MJ over so he could muscle up the bravery to fully give up on his found family — and the idea that Hen isn’t willing to give up on him is some weight off his shoulders.

He wonders, in a distant sort of manner, if it’s enough to make him stay.

He sits long enough that he can feel his head start to float in the clouds. It’s the beginning of a dissociative episode, he can tell. He’s gotten much better at recognizing his downward spirals. This was definitely a big enough trigger to send him careening down.

But he can’t do that here, not when he’s so open and doesn’t have a wall he can comfortably press himself against or a soft blanket to wrap himself in. 

It isn’t much, but he’s gotten better at managing the spirals. 

He pinches his thigh firmly enough to ground himself in reality for now — not the healthiest coping mechanism, but whatever — and begins to make his way to his apartment.

His morning run went much longer than he had planned. Not that he has anything planned, really. MJ left already so he’s going home to an empty apartment. There isn’t much of a mess to clean up. The girls had gotten chocolate on the bed from letting the chocolate-covered almonds melt, but MJ and Buck stripped the bed before she left that morning, so all Buck really has on his plate today is to start some laundry and make his bed.

Now that he has Hen’s assurance that she’ll keep Chim away, Buck mentally adds ‘reach out to Maddie’ to his plate.

His legs are moving entirely on autopilot. Buck recognizes enough of these landmarks to know that he’s going to the right place, which is good. Getting lost while almost-dissociating sounds like a nightmare. 

How Maddie will react to him reaching out is a real mystery. It’s part of the reason that it’s taken so long. The longer he puts it off, the harder it becomes. 

He doesn’t have a good answer to why he’s been avoiding her, not one that she’ll like.

He needs to formulate a plan. She’s going to want to know why he’s transferring. He probably couldn’t say that it came from up above, given that in his settlement they’d promised he could stay at the 118 if he so chooses. 

Plus, there’s the issue of Maddie being able to read him like a large-print novel.

And the fact that Buck can’t lie for shit.

What would happen if he told the truth? Would she believe him? Would she press to know how things have been with Chim? 

The more he ponders, the less sure he is exactly what happened. If he were to be entirely truthful, what exactly is that truth?

Buck’s cotton-filled head starts to throb. 

The front door of his apartment appears. Buck has no recollection of walking up the stairs or opening the lobby door.

Regardless of how he got home, he’s here now. He lets himself in and falls, truly, deeply, into the dissociative episode.

~  
  
Not counting her time with Doug, the longest Maddie has ever gone without speaking to Buck is her first finals experience. 

She’d been so swamped, made the mistake of taking eighteen credits of intro classes, and was fucking dying.

When she’d finished her last exam, she had sat on the first bench outside of Grips Hall and called him. 

He had sounded ragged, she remembers. Like he’d been working just as hard as she had. 

With a glance at her watch, she saw that it was nearing his bedtime. Maybe he’d had a long day at Little League, she muses. 

But she’s tired down to her bones and didn’t have time to analyze her little brother, so she’d apologized for being gone so long and promised to call after she’d slept.

Now, when they live in the same city and both have unlimited texting and calling, they’ve almost doubled the past not-speaking record. Maddie isn’t counting the brief his and byes. They haven’t had a real conversation in almost a month and a half and she’s had it.

Buck can give every excuse under the sun, but she is seeing her little brother for at least one full hour this week. She’ll show up at 118 if she needs to. 

She texts him exactly that — if you don’t cut out the excuses I’ll ambush you on a call — but definitely wasn’t expecting a call from him almost three minutes later.

“Hey, Maddie.”

She’s thrown back to that conversation with eight-year-old Buck, one she barely remembers, and feels the same concern.

“I wasn’t trying to avoid you, I’m sorry. I’d love to get coffee sometime this week.”

Relief floods her — finally.

“Awesome! I’ve missed you so much, Buck. Do you want to get coffee and breakfast tomorrow, before your run?”

Faintly, she can hear the sound of him chewing his lip.

“I probably won’t go on a run tomorrow, but that still works. Are you working?”

“Not until later in the day.”

“How about 9 am?”

That’s late, she notes. Howie starts work at 7 am, and he and Buck are usually on the same shift.

The concern amplifies. She resists the urge to brush it off. It could just be that Chim and Buck are offset a few hours.

But she’s regretted not asking eight-year-old Buck what was wrong every time he’s gotten sick since that day. She’d gotten home for Christmas break and Buck had changed. Again, she’d brushed it off as him growing up, but that concern had never left her. 

Something had happened to Buck after she’d left to get her nursing degree at eighteen. 

Now that her something-is-happening-to-Buck alarm is ringing again, she’s not going to ignore it.

Something has happened.

“That works perfectly. Can you pick me up?”

  
It isn’t necessarily kind to corner Buck in his car. Maddie knows that. She just doesn’t care about what is kind. Not when something is so wrong with her brother.

It’s just after nine and they’re driving to a breakfast place nearby. She’s been craving jam-waffles and pickles, for whatever reason. Maybe she can convince Buck to order something that comes with a side of pickles.

She’s chatting aimlessly while her eyes track the movement of Buck’s fingers. They’re tapping randomly on the steering wheel. He’s fidgeting in his seat, acting like he’s never sat in it before in his life.

Buck’s nervous, she realizes.

While she complains about her strange sweet-salty cravings, she rethinks her strategy.

Maybe he’s ready to tell her what’s wrong. If that’s the case, she should just let him figure it out. Buck’s always worried that he’s going to hurt someone with his words when he’s serious. He tends to mull.

The place she picked is pretty busy, medium-sized. It’s close enough to her apartment that the drive was relatively short — only ten minutes — and busy enough that no one will be able to hear their conversations while being not so small that they’re claustrophobic but not so large that Buck won’t be able to see everyone who comes in.

He’s cagey when he’s freaked out.

When he’d finally been able to sleep in his bed post-explosion, he’d emphasized the importance of everyone letting him know when they’re coming over. Once, Chim had forgotten to text and instead had let himself in and headed upstairs.

Chim had refused to tell Maddie exactly what happened, but it was ugly enough that Chim helped him install one of the Nest security cameras like he’d done for her when she’d first moved out of Abby’s apartment.

They arrive and Buck manages to squeeze his Jeep into one of the few remaining spots in the parking lot — another perk of this particular place. The quiet walk from the Jeep to the front door edges on uncomfortable. Buck holds the door for her, as usual, and trails behind her until Maddie gestures him forward, nodding her head to indicate he should pick the table.

She’d chosen well. The place was just as busy as she’d wanted it to be and they didn’t have a host so Buck was able to choose their table. Maddie pretended not to notice it was a table that allowed him to see both the front door and the kitchen door.

They settled into the table, noses in the menu, still quiet.

After a moment of contemplation, Maddie sets down the menu she had carefully perused the night before and looks at Buck. 

Well, looked at Buck’s menu. She fights the urge to tap at his menu and insist they start talking. Buck would talk at his own pace, she tells herself.

The server had come and gone by the time that Buck fully emerged from behind the menu. Much to Maddie’s internal chagrin, Buck orders a hearty meal, but not one that includes pickles and she isn’t brave enough to request them with her stack of multigrain waffles, hold the butter.

Now she can see as well as hear him chewing on his lip.

“Buck, I just want to say that I can tell something is going on. Something… that isn’t necessarily great and it’s probably why you’ve been avoiding me lately.” Buck looks shame-faced, which hadn’t been Maddie’s intent but is sort of satisfying anyway.

“Whatever’s going on… I want to know, but if you aren’t ready to tell me, it’s okay. I’m here to listen. Chim and the others are, too. They’ve noticed you’ve been distant.” Buck’s face clouds.

“Just know that whenever you’re ready to tell me, I’m here for you. I love you so much, okay?”

He nods and they fall back into quiet until the server comes with their food. They drop off the waffles — they put butter on, Maddie notices — and Buck’s All American with eggs, meat, and hash browns but no pickles.

After they fill up both Buck and Maddie’s coffee, not that Maddie intends to drink anymore, she can tell that Buck is getting ready to speak.

Maddie pointedly doesn’t sit up straighter or look too hard at him. She’s unnaturally naturally posed, she knows, but it’s the best she can do right now.

“I’m transferring, Maddie. I’m leaving the 118.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends. I've made a bunch of edits to this (minor ones, mostly) and I'm too lazy to copy chapter-by-chapter. Would anyone mind if I re-uploaded this all in one chapter?

This isn’t a cartoon, so Maddie doesn’t spit her drink out, but she gets as close as she ever has in real life. She had been expecting a lot of things — declining mental health, a secret relationship, a new pet, a new project — but never had she ever thought Buck would even consider leaving the 118, let alone actually going through with it.

Maddie can tell that her shock is blatant on her face. Buck looks extremely uncomfortable, like he’s getting ready for a shouting match to occur. Before Maddie can even begin to think of how to respond to that, she starts with the basics.

First, she carefully makes her face blank. Showing her disbelief to the world isn’t going to help this situation. Buck always needs someone to just hear him out and that is exactly what Maddie plans to do.

“Alright. I’m, um, going to need a minute to process. First, though. Are you okay, Buck?”

She can see the different emotions he feels as they pass by on his face. First, the surprise, then confusion, then happiness, then settling back on confusion. He opens his mouth a couple of times, obviously lost for words.

“Okay. Let me reword. Physically, are you okay, Buck? How is your physical health?”

“It’s okay. I’ve been a little more careful with what I eat, but I’m pretty much keeping the same calorie intake-spending ratio and the same nutrient breakdown. All’s well, physically.”

That takes some of the stress of her shoulders. Not that Buck would be transferring because of a physical issue — that would persist regardless of station — but knowing that there haven’t been more clots is a relief, at least.

She nods and digs into her food. 

Buck hesitates, watches her eat for a moment until Maddie puts her fork down and swallows.

“Eat, Buck. Let’s eat breakfast and go from there, okay?”

He nods. He doesn’t look relieved like she’d hoped, but she needs time to process, to figure out what questions she can ask.

She desperately wants to know why — that’s obviously the biggest question.

Is this a resurgence of the lawsuit? Did something happen with the settlement? Was he being forced out or was this his own decision? 

Maddie spirals into her own thoughts for a while, slowly making her way through her too-buttery waffles. As she nears the end of the second waffle, she settles on asking Buck to elaborate and tell his story. Once she knows more, she can decide how to move forward.

Chim has been telling her that Buck’s transition back has been entirely smooth. When pushed, he did say that he’d been a little quiet, but that was totally understandable with everything he’s gone through. Maddie wouldn’t expect him to be all buddy-buddy with everyone, given what they put him through with the lawsuit.

Chim doesn’t know — no one knows, unless Buck’s told — but going through with it hadn’t been a quick decision. Buck had brought it to Maddie and they spent hours deliberating and debating before settling on the reality that Bobby doesn’t treat Buck fairly and he never would, unless he was forced.

When Buck has polished off his plate and Maddie has made as big of a dent in her waffles as she’s going to, she flags down their server and gets the check. Maddie pays at her insistence, and they make their way to the only-slightly-less-full parking lot. 

Maddie opens the passenger door and makes steady eye contact with her brother through the car. They simultaneously climb in. Once the doors are closed, Maddie clicks her seatbelt in and adjusts to face Buck as much as she can. 

She has to assume she knows nothing. If she hadn’t seen this coming, all of her previous assumptions about her brother were based on faults.

She starts with the basics. “Do you work today?” Buck shakes his head.

Something is wrong, obviously, but it’s so much wronger than she ever imagined if Buck and Chim aren’t even working the same shifts anymore. If they don’t work this 36-hour shift, they won’t be able to align shifts for another week or so. 

She nods once. “Okay. Park or your place?” Buck chews on his lip again. It must be getting raw.

“My place.” Buck decides and puts the car in reverse.

The drive to Buck’s apartment is made longer by the silence that teeters toward awkwardness but is mostly painful. Maddie escaped her abusive husband, fought her way across the country to her brother, and here she is. After relearning him, it turns out everything she knows is wrong.

Her heart hurts.

The silence isn’t broken until after the car is parked and they’re settled on the couch at Buck’s apartment, knees touching.

Maddie takes a moment to look around and see her brother’s apartment through the eyes of a stranger.

It’s bare — there are few personal pictures on the wall. Mostly there are books scattered around and thoughtfully placed furniture. It’s neat, too. It looks like he dusts.

When she’s done examining the apartment, Maddie swings her gaze back to Buck.

“What’s going on, Buck?”

Maybe it’s the question, maybe it’s the look on her face, maybe it’s the fact that he knows he’s safe here, in his home with his sister. But Buck loses it.

The sobs are ragged and sharp and Maddie’s throat pulses in sympathy.

She shifts on the couch so she isn’t facing him but is instead holding him. He curls up slightly and tucks his head under her chin like he would when he was really little and fit on her lap.

He’s too big for that now and Maddie mourns the loss of her tiny baby brother whose only pains were skinned knees and absent parents.

The sobs are interspersed with mutterings that Maddie can only barely begin to understand. It seems like they center around loneliness. It all just adds to the pain in Maddie’s heart.

Her poor brother can’t ever catch a fucking break.

It takes a while, but eventually, Buck runs out of tears. When he’s ready, Maddie carefully gets up. She grabs him some ibuprofen and water — he’s going to have a killer headache soon.

Once he’s plied with some medicine and plenty of water, Maddie begins again with more care.

“How about some tea?” Buck nods and when he rises to make it, she doesn’t protest. Having something warm to hold will be helpful, but nothing helps Buck more than being productive.

As he prepares the tea — making more noise than should be necessary to start an electric kettle and grab two tea bags — he begins to talk.

Buck tells her the story of the past seven months. Sure, the team forgave him on paper. But he still isn’t welcome back to family dinner and is barely allowed on calls. He’s an outsider in his own home.

He tells her about his new friends — not how he met Indya, of course — and their disastrous encounter with Bobby.

He tells her how Hen apologized and promised to keep Chim busy so that he could finally have confidence in speaking to Maddie alone.

As the story unravels, Maddie pales more and more. Her hands clench into fists, nails digging into sensitive palm flesh.

This is worse than she ever could have imagined. She doesn’t just have to relearn her little brother — she has to relearn the father of her unborn child and nearly everyone else that she has come to trust while living in LA. More than anything, Maddie is grateful for the two women that Buck has met. From how he talks about them, they seem to truly care for Buck unconditionally. Though, to be fair, she thought that of Howie and the 118 before this, too.

By the time Maddie uncurls her fists and looks back up at Buck, his face has dropped back into his seemingly default anxious face. Brow furrowed, lip chewed, hands twisting together. Somehow, Maddie’s heart aches more. “Buck, I honestly don’t know what to say.”

“No, Maddie, I promise I’m not lying, why would I —”

Buck’s desperation to make Maddie believe him is somehow the worst possible reaction.

“No, Buck, I believe you. Obviously, I believe you. First, you’re my little brother. Second, why in god’s green earth would you ever lie about this? Third, if you’re honestly transferring stations, the reason would have to be… really huge. And this certainly is.” Buck’s shoulders drop a touch and Maddie’s muscles are tender for him. “If Hen agrees with your decision to transfer, it’s honestly probably worse than you’re even telling me.”

Buck stays suspiciously silent, which only confirms it.

“I’m sorry you couldn’t come to me about this, Buck. I want you to know that, behind Mango, you are one of the most important people in my life. Your relationship — or lack thereof — with Howie will never impact the way I treat you. I love you so much, Buck. You and I are solid, even if everything else isn’t.” She holds out her pinkie and looks at Buck insistently until he gives in, twisting their pinkies together. He smiles, just a little, eyes a bit wet, and gives one small shake to their hands.

“Thanks, Maddie. I actually already filled out the transfer forms. I was just… I don’t know. Waiting to gather up the courage. I guess I sort of wanted your blessing, too. I love you so much, Maddie. I’m sorry I’ve been keeping this from you.”

Maddie shakes her head firmly. “No, Buck. Well. Yeah, you should have told me earlier. But I totally get why you didn’t. You and I are solid, remember?” 

The tortured look on his face doesn’t go away. “Fine. I forgive you, Buck. All is well with us. As long as you’re okay,” Buck’s face twists a little, and Maddie rewords her statement. “As long as you’re getting towards okay, I’m happy.”

Buck smiles. It’s wane and tempered by heartbreak, but it’s there. And Maddie has faith that it will only get stronger with time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. I haven't updated in forever. To be honest, I sort of lost the flame and also my mental health has been very up and down. I'm working really hard to stabilize it, but it takes a lot of work.
> 
> I think I have gotten to a place where you aren't dying for more. My goal is to give y'all a mostly-satisfying ending and then when I am healthier, I will hopefully return to the story and either add to the main one or do a sequel. 
> 
> I hope that this is somewhat satisfying. Thank you for reading and commenting -- it's been the only reason I've been able to write at all.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maddie, MJ, and Indya comfort Buck.

This is real life, so when things get worse before they get better, Maddie isn’t shocked. Now that she’s been let in on the big secret, Hen made a group chat with her, Maddie, the two new women in Buck’s life, and Buck himself. 

It’s through this that Maddie once again finds herself at Buck’s apartment, in circumstances that are not different enough from the previous day’s for Maddie to be entirely comfortable.

After the air had been cleared the day before, Buck made a plan to hand in his transfer paperwork to Bobby the next day. Given that the Chief knew of his tentative transfer plans, it wouldn’t take long for the paperwork to go through. The Chief, unlike his subordinate, had been regularly checking in with Buck to see if his transition back was going smoothly – though he was mostly concerned with Buck’s physical health. Buck had been reluctant to tell him any of the details. After everything, Buck’s loyalty laid with the 118 and it probably always would.

Unlocking the door to her brother’s apartment, Maddie ponders the endless ways that interaction between Buck and Bobby could have gone. Given his simple “sos” text followed by “im at the loft”, Maddie would bet dollars to donuts that it went poorly.

It’s quiet when the door opens. Maddie toes off her shoes and pads into the living room – it’s empty. She heads upstairs and finds Buck cuddled between who she assumes are Indya and MJ. His eyes are closed but he’s obviously not sleeping with how often his breath hitches. Maddie takes a moment to drink in these two women. It’s obvious they love each other. They’re holding hands around Buck, their focus not on each other but finding comfort in their loved one anyway. 

Indya is stroking Buck’s face gently while MJ spoons him. Buck so easily dwarfs both women that in any other situation, it would be comical. Maddie looks at them and wonders how Bobby could have ever thought they were sleeping together. Their touches are so innocent and sweet and reminiscent of the way that Maddie touched Buck when he was little and always hurt. Soft, with so much love.

MJ must nudge Indya, or squeeze her hand, or in some way alerted her to Maddie’s presence. MJ’s the only one with eyes open who is looking in Maddie’s direction but Indya is the one who says “Hi Maddie. I wish we met under better circumstances. If you don’t mind a little spooning, there’s a spot here for you between Buck and me.” Buck’s mouth quirks up a little and he lets out a gentle snort at the idea of Indya spooning Maddie. 

Maddie’s secure enough in her heterosexuality to be comfortable being spooned by some woman she doesn’t know if it means she gets to be close to her baby brother. While she’s climbing between Buck and Indya, MJ bats at Buck in jest.

It’s warm. And nice. It reminds her of when they were little when Buck would get hurt. Hurt himself. After the fawning from their parents – it was there, what Buck craved, but it never lasted long – he would return to Maddie’s side, where he belonged. And they would cuddle in Maddie’s full because even when Buck got a taste of a bigger bed he could never bear to not be curled into a little ball. 

Maddie would hold him just like MJ is now, though he was much smaller then. She would hold him like he was precious and try to make him feel the love she has for him. She tried so hard to make him believe that she loved him unconditionally, but the frigid absence of their parents drowned out everything positive in Buck’s life.

It’s tempting to be angry that Buck turned to these two women instead of her for so long. Instead, all she feels is a heavy sort of relief that Buck has more people that love him with the same strength she does, people that aren’t afraid to do whatever it takes to make him believe he isn’t alone.

They lie there for an hour or so, Buck’s eyes steadily leaking the entire time, before Indya fidgets enough that Maddie blindly kicks behind her. “Whatever it is that you’re dancing around for, take care of it, dear lord,” Maddie sighs.

“Ugh, fine.” Buck presses his smile into Maddie’s hair, trying to hide his amusement from Indya.

It doesn’t work.

“Oh, wow, I see how it is. Now that Buck’s brought his hot sister into the mix, it’s the Buckley’s versus the lesbians. Wow, I get it. Okay. Damn. I’m taking my girlfriend and leaving. C’mon MJ.”

Buck and Maddie devolve into hysterics two-thirds of the way through Indya’s tirade, laughing even harder when MJ goes loose, allowing Indya to drag her out of the bed without any help at all.

Once MJ is on her feet, though, she stands unassisted. Indya grasps her wrist and leads her to the bathroom, MJ’s head lolling over her shoulder to make unimpressed eye contact with the Buckley siblings.

Buck accidentally snorts a little, his stuffed nose doing him no favors, and that combined with the look on MJ’s face – Maddie can’t breathe. 

By the time they return (only a few minutes, but Maddie is sure Buck will play it up later), everyone is much calmer and put together. Maddie has nudged Buck into a slightly more upright position and is running her hands through his hair.

Indya smiles softly at the pair and gestures downstairs. Buck nods, heaving himself out of bed to stumble down the steps. It brings Maddie back, once again, to Buck’s childhood. 

It’s bittersweet. Every memory of raising Evan is. Every time she tries to remember how sweet he was – is – or something adorable he did, there are, in the background, shadows of missing parents. Of a missing brother. Her heart aches for them. But for every wave of mourning she feels for a family torn apart, she feels doubly mournful for the childhood Buck missed out on, the parents that should have been there.

But they weren’t. Maddie tries not to let it get to her. Instead, she follows her brother and his two friends downstairs, where Buck collapses onto the couch while the girls rummage through the kitchen looking for sustenance. She doesn’t even try to suppress the grin at how familiar they are in his apartment, how content Buck is to let them be. He trusts them to take care of him. He’s letting them do it. 

That speaks volumes as to how much personal growth Buck has gone through. Like many of her memories, particularly involving Buck, the one of Buck’s desperate face while he tries to explain how he can’t live without being a firefighter surfaces and stings. Maddie shoves it aside and focuses on the moment instead. 

It’s soft and warm. The three girls will take care of Buck, hear what happened with Bobby, and make sure he knows he’s loved.

Maddie is confident he’ll be okay.

At least, she is until – 

The door lock clicks open. 

Eddie storms through.

“You’re fucking transferring?” He shouts.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hen does her best to do damage control.

“You’re fucking transferring?” Eddie shouts, the anger nearly palpable.

Buck twists to face him but doesn’t rise from the couch. His eyes, which had previously begun to dry, start leaking again in earnest. He makes eye contact with Eddie but stays silent.

“How fucking dare you?” Eddie questions again. “It’s bad enough that you pulled that childish shit with the lawsuit, but now you’re leaving for good? What about what you told Chris?”

It’s as if Eddie hasn’t even registered that there are other people in the apartment. 

At the mention of Chris, Buck visibly flinches. Eddie’s face twists into a painful looking smirk, like he’s satisfied that Buck is hurting as much as he is.

“Eddie, please,” Buck begins to reply but is cut off again.

“You promised him you wouldn’t leave. But here you are, doing exactly that for the second time in less than a year.”

If MJ, Indya, or Maddie knew Buck any less, they would expect him to stand up and throw cutting remarks back. But that isn’t who Buck is. Buck lets Eddie tear him apart when there was nothing there to begin with and throws no words back. Instead, he nods. The only sign of real emotion aside from his still-leaking eyes are the suppressed sobs. His shoulders shake, his lips press together until they’re white.

“I can’t believe I ever trusted a whore like you with my son.”

With the last, most cutting of them all remark, Eddie spins on his heel, stalks out, and slams the door behind him.

When the air settles again, it’s as if nothing happened for just a moment. Buck doesn’t even let himself cry. Instead, he stands from the couch, drags himself upstairs, crawls under the covers, and pulls them over his head.

Indya isn’t sure they’ll ever be able to extricate him. She shares a look between the two other self-appointed members of the Buck Protection squad. Both of them look lost, like they have no idea what to do. That forces Indya to abandon her dream of following Eddie to literally stab him in the back to make up for the metaphorical knife he slipped in-between Buck’s ribs.

As Indya turns to grab water and snacks to bring upstairs, the worst sound she’s ever heard comes from Buck. The wail is ragged and full of pain. It’s like he lost everything he’s ever loved and has no chance of getting it back. Indya has to close her eyes against it, has to let a few tears out, before she is ready to return to cuddling.

When the trio trudge upstairs, all they can see of Buck is his eyes, red and swollen, and his nose. “They never even wanted me,” he says. His voice sounds even worse than he looks, scratchy and reduced to a whisper. 

Maddie goes to shake her head, to disagree, when he replies, “Bobby didn’t even try to stop me. Didn’t even ask if he could make me stay. Just took my forms and nodded. Didn’t even say goodbye.”

Damn. Maddie had dreamed up a lot of scenarios, had played through quite a few interactions between the two men, but she hadn’t ever imagined Bobby could be so cold. Maddie used to think he treated Buck so differently because he thought of the kid as just that – a kid. His kid. 

Apparently, she had been wrong.  
  
Eddie barely makes it out of Buck’s door and to the apartment before his legs give out and he starts sobbing. The man he had trusted most in the world just fucking left him, just like everyone else in his life had. He wants so badly to be angry with Buck, wants to let himself fall into the anger like he had before. But now that the initial anger has been let out, all he can feel is exhaustion. He’s never been enough for anyone. He’d been a fool to think he’d be enough for Buck.

He’s about to pull himself together to leave when he hears the worst noise he’s ever heard. A scream so full of anguish it reminds him of his army brother’s wife when she was told her husband had died.

And what Eddie wouldn’t give to not recognize the anguished sound. But it also reminds him of the wail Buck had let out when he was trapped under the truck. That’s because it could only have come from Buck.

It’s like a boot to his stomach. 

Jesus.

If Buck didn’t care, if he was truly so ready to move on from Eddie and Christopher, how could he make that noise? How could produce a sound more painful than when he had tons of steel on his leg?

Eddie – Eddie doesn’t know what to do with that noise.

A year ago, he’d have dropped everything and run to see him. But now… Eddie doesn’t know. 

He just… he just doesn’t know anything anymore.  
  
Hen isn’t surprised when she gets a call from Eddie the same day that Buck hands in his transfer papers. She is, however, surprised when he tells her he’s in Buck’s parking lot.

“Don’t do anything rash, Eddie,” she warns.

There is a beat of silence.

“I think it may be too late for that, Hen.”

Eddie tells her what she did and Hen wants to put her head through a wall. Why is she friends with such stupid fucking men?

“Dear lord, Eddie, do you ever think before you do anything?”

Eddie makes a noise of complaint.

“Eddie, I want you to imagine something for me.” He manages to eek out a ‘sure’. Hen’s tone suggests a command. He isn’t eager to find out what the consequences of hanging up would be.

“I want you to imagine that you are severely injured because of a personal vendetta against someone else.” Eddie tries to interrupt, here. He isn’t interested in going over Buck’s mistakes again. “Eddie, shut up. So, you have a long-ass recovery period ahead of you, but at least you have your friends. The family you have never had. But then, your family stops showing up. They stop calling or texting, stop helping you out. At least, until you get your cast off! They’re talking to you again, but they’re only telling you about your mistakes. Slow down, they say. You’re pushing yourself too hard, they say. All you hear is We don’t want you back. So, you push yourself even harder.

“Your welcome back party feels like the turning of a new page. Everything is how it should be until you can’t breathe because there’s blood in your lungs. All that work you did is down the drain. And all your family can say is I told you so.

“Then, for good measure, you are in a tsunami. You lose the one thing that has been consistently there, the one person that you love more than anything. And all you can do is blame yourself, because who else could be at fault?”

Eddie makes a noise of protest, here. “Please, Eddie, don’t pretend any number of reassurances would have made Buck believe he wasn’t to blame.”

“Then, even though you saved countless lives, your boss, the man you thought had your back no matter what, who you thought of as the dad you never had, he tells you he’s keeping you from the only thing you haven’t fucked up.”

“So, you sue?!” Eddie exclaims.

“Sure, Eddie. You make a mistake. You fuck up. You feel like you have no one to turn to because your family abandons you at the drop of a hat and turns on you for no reason. So, you make a mistake. And after you drop the lawsuit, after you work your ass off to make amends, every says they forgive you. And then they fucking don’t. They lie right to your face. They ignore you. They allow you to be harassed at work. They watch you spiral into the deepest depression you’ve ever been in and they do nothing.

“Why the hell do you think Buck owes you anything? Why does he have to give even when there is nothing left to give? Why does he owe you his time, his energy, his parenting skills? Why are you so mad he’s transferring? It isn’t like you speak to him at all. You barely even look at him, let alone let him near Chris. How can you be so mad at him?”

After a beat or two of silence, Hen hears Eddie hang up the phone.  



End file.
